W O R K E R S O F A L L C O U N T R I E S , U N I T E!
LENIN
COLLECTED WORKS
2u
A
THE RUSSIAN EDITION WAS PRINTED
IN ACCORDANCE WITH A DECISION
OF THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
AND THE SECOND CONGRESS OF SOVIETS
OF THE U.S.S.R.
ИНCTИTУT МАРÇCИзМА — ЛЕНИНИзМА пpи ЦK KНCC
B. n. l d H n H
СОЧИНEНИЯ
И з дa нuе чеmвеpmoe
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО
ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ
MОСКВА
V. I. L E N I N
cOLLEcTED WORKS
VOLUME
29
March– * ugu st 1919
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
EDITED BY G E O R G E H A N N A
From Marx to Mao
M
L
© Digital Reprints
2011
www . marx 2 mao . com
First printing 1965
Second printing 1974
7
CONTENTS
Page
Preface
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15
March- August 1919
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET . MARCH 12, 1919
. . . . .
19
1 . REPORT ON THE FOREIGN AND HOME POLICY OF THE
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS. Brief Newspaper Report
19
2 . REPLIES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS
. . . . . . . . . . .
26
SESSION OF THE FIRST CONGRESS OF FARM LABOURERS OF
PETROGRAD GUBERNIA . MARCH 13, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . .
38
1 . SPEECH ON THE ORGANISATION OF A FARM LABOURERS’
UNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
38
2 . REPLIES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS
. . . . . . . . . . .
43
SPEECH DELIVERED AT A MEETING IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE,
PETROGRAD . MARCH 13, 1919 . Newspaper Report . . . . . . .
47
THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND
GOVERNMENT . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
55
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
87
SPEECH IN MEMORY OF Y . M . SVERDLOV AT A SPECIAL SESSION
OF
THE
ALL- RUSSIA
CENTRAL
EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE .
MARCH 18, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
89
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FUNERAL OF YAKOV SVERDLOV .
MARCH 18, 1919 . Newspaper Report . . . . . . . . . . . .
95
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R . C . P . (B . )
97
Afterword .
DIFFICULTIES
OF
THE
SOVIET
. . . . . . . . . . . .
8
CONTENTS
1 . Rough Draft of the Programme of the R . C . P .
. . . .
99
The Basic Tasks of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in
Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
105
2 . Draft Programme of the R . C . P . (Bolsheviks)
. . . . 119
3 . Insertion for Political Section of the Programme . . . 125
4 . Fragment of the Political Section of the Programme 126
5 . Section of the Programme on National Relations . . . 1 2 7
6 . Insertion for the Final Draft of the Programme Section
on the National Question . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
7 . Preamble to the Military Section of the Programme 129
8 . First Paragraph of Section of the Programme on the
Courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 1
9 . Section of the Programme Dealing with Public Edu cation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
10 . Section of the Programme Dealing with Religion . . 134
11 . Points from the Economic Section of the Prog r a m m e 135
12 . Agrarian Section of the Programme . . . . . . . . 139
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R . C . P . (B . ) . March 18 - 23, 1919
1 . SPEECH OPENING THE CONGRESS . MARCH 18
. . . . . . 143
2 . REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE . MARCH 18
3 . REPORT ON THE PARTY PROGRAMME . MARCH 19
4. S P E E C H C L O S I N G T H E D E B A T E
GRAMME . MARCH 19 . . . . .
ON
THE
. . 141
. . . . 146
. . . . . 165
PARTY
PRO-
. . . . . . . . . . . 186
5 . WIRELESS MESSAGE OF GREETING ON BEHALF OF THE
CONGRESS TO THE GOVERNMENT OF THE HUNGARIAN
SOVIET REPUBLIC . MARCH 22 . . . . . . . . . . . .
6 . REPORT ON WORK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE . MARCH 23
197
. . . 198
7 . SPEECH IN OPPOSITION TO A MOTION TO CLOSE THE DE BATE ON THE REPORT ON WORK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE .
MARCH 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
216
8 . RESOLUTION ON THE ATTITUDE TO THE MIDDLE PEASA N T S
217
9 . SPEECH CLOSING THE CONGRESS . MARCH 23
. . . . . . 221
WIRELESS MESSAGE OF GREETING TO THE GOVERNMENT OF
THE HUNGARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC . MARCH 22, 1919 . . . . .
226
9
CONTENTS
RECORD OF WIRELESS MESSAGE TO BÉLA KUN . MARCH 23, 1919
REPLY TO AN OPEN LETTER BY A BOURGEOIS SPECIALIST
227
. . . 228
ON THE CANDIDACY OF M . I . KALININ FOR THE POST OF CHAIR MAN OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE .
Speech at the Twelfth Session of the All - Russia Central Executive Committee . March 30, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
233
. . . . . . . . . . . 237
1 . IN MEMORY OF COMRADE YAKOV MIKHAILOVICH SVERD LOV, CHAIRMAN OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2 . THE THIRD, COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
. . .
FROM MARX
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
TO MAO
239
. . . . . 240
3 . COMMUNICATION ON THE WIRELESS NEGOTIATIONS WITH
BÉLA KUN
. . . . .
242
4 . AN APPEAL TO THE RED ARMY
. . . . . 244
5 . THE MIDDLE PEASANTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
6 . WHAT IS SOVIET POWER? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
7 . HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE CAN BE SAVED FROM THE
OPPRESSION OF THE LANDOWNERS AND CAPITALISTS FOR
EVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8 . ANTI - JEWISH POGROMS
250
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
NOT FOR. . . .
.
COMMERCIAL
. . . . . . . . . . .
DISTRIBUTION
TELEPHONE MESSAGE TO THE ALL- RUSSIA
COMMISSION . April 1 , 1919. . . . . . . .
EXTRAORDINARY
. . . . 254
EXTRAORDINARY PLENARY MEETING OF THE MOSCOW SOVIET
OF WORKERS’ AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES April 3 , 1919 . . .
255
1 . REPORT ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION OF
THE SOVIET REPUBLIC
. . . .
255
2 . RESOLUTION ON THE REPORT ON THE DOMESTIC AND
FOREIGN SITUATION OF THE SOVIET REPUBLIC . . . . .
272
LETTER TO THE PETROGRAD
EASTERN FRONT . . . . . .
WORKERS
ON
AID
FOR
THE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
THESES OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIKS) ON THE SITUATION ON THE
EASTERN FRONT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
276
PLENARY MEETING OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL COUNCIL OF
TRADE UNIONS . April 11 , 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
280
1 . REPORT ON THE TASKS OF THE TRADE UNIONS IN THE
MOBILISATION FOR THE EASTERN FRONT . . . . . . . .
283
2 . REPLY TO A QUESTION ON THE TULA STRIKE
. . . . . . 296
10
CONTENTS
3 . SPEECH CLOSING THE DISCUSSION
. . . . . . . . . . 298
FOREWORD TO HENRI GUILBEAUX’S PAMPHLET SOCIALISM AND
SYNDICALISM IN FRANCE DURING THE WAR . . . . . . . .
302
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FIRST MOSCOW SOVIET COMMANDERS’ COURSES . APRIL 15, 1919 . Brief Newspaper Report . . . .
304
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY
. . . . 305
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE RAILWAYMEN
JUNCTION . APRIL 16, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . .
MOSCOW
OF
. . . . . . 314
THE FIGHT AGAINST KOLCHAK . SPEECH AT A CONFERENCE OF
MOSCOW
FACTORY
COMMITTEES
AND
TRADE
UNIONS.
APRIL 17, 1919 . Newspaper Report . . . . . . . . . . . . .
320
SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF COMMUNIST
STUDENTS. APRIL 17, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
324
MESSAGE OF GREETINGS TO THE BAVARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC
325
TELEGRAM TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S
COMMISSARS OF THE UKRAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
327
THREE SPEECHES DELIVERED IN RED SQUARE . MAY 1, 1919 .
Newspaper Report
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
1. . . . . .
2. . . . . .
3 . Speech at
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
the Unveiling of a Monument to Stepan
Razin on Lobnoye Mesto . . . . . . . . . . . .
331
FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION . May 6-19,
1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
333
1 . SPEECH OF GREETING . MAY 6
. . . . . . . . . . . 335
2 . DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS OF FREEDOM
AND EQUALITY . MAY 19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I
II
III
IV
V
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339
340
345
350
357
370
FOREWORD TO THE PUBLISHED SPEECH “DECEPTION OF THE
PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY” . . . . .
377
TELEGRAM TO THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS OF THE
UKRAINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
382
11
CONTENTS
ADDENDUM TO THE DRAFT APPEAL TO GERMAN WORKERS
AND TO PEASANTS WHO DO NOT EXPLOIT THE LABOUR OF
OTHERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
TELEGRAM TO J . V . STALIN . May 20 , 1919
. . . . . . . . . 385
SPEECH AT THE UNIVERSAL MILITARY TRAINING
MAY 25, 1919 . Brief Newspaper Report . . . . . .
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
BEWARE OF SPIES!
FESTIVAL
. . . . . 386
. . . . . . . . . 387
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
TELEGRAM TO J . V . STALIN . May 29 , 1919
383
. . . . . . . . 392
. . . . . . . . . 402
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
DRAFT C . C . DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
. . . . . . . . . . 404
TELEGRAM TO J . V . STALIN . June 4 , 1919
. . . . . . . . . 406
DRAFT DECISION OF THE C . C . R . C . P . (B . ) ON THE PETROGRAD
FRONT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
407
A GREAT BEGINNING . Heroism of the Workers in the Rear .
“Communist Subbotniks”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
TELEGRAM TO J . V . STALIN . June 30, 1919
. . . . . . . . . 435
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN! Letter of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
to Party Organisations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Main Task of the Moment
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
The Truth About Kolchak and Denikin Must Be Explained
to the People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
The Fight Against Counter-revolution in the Rear .
.
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.
The Population Must Be Mobilised for War to a Man .
“Work in a Revolutionary Way” . . . . . . . . .
Work Among Men Called Up for Service
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Curtailment of Work Not for the War .
Work in the Front Zone . . . . . . .
Attitude Towards Military Experts . . .
Work Among Deserters
Direct Aid to the Army
436
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438
439
440
441
442
445
447
450
453
454
12
CONTENTS
THE PRESENT SITUATION AND THE IMMEDIATE TASKS OF
SOVIET POWER . Report Delivered to a Joint Meeting of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee , the Moscow Soviet of
Workers’ and Red Army Deputies , the All-Russia Council
of Trade Unions and Representatives of
Committees . July 4 , 1919 . . . . . . . .
Moscow
Factory
. . . . . . . . 456
THE STATE . A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University .
July 11 , 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
470
THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION OF THE REPUBLIC .
REPORT DELIVERED TO THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE OF THE
R . C . P . (B . ) . JULY 12, 1919 . Newspaper Report . . . . . . . . .
489
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL . Ramsay Mac-Donald
on the Third International
.
.
.
.
.
.
497
498
500
503
506
509
SPEECH ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION DELIVERED TO A RED ARMY CONFERENCE HELD IN KHODYNSKOYE
CAMP . JULY 15, 1919 . Brief Newspaper Report . . . . . . . .
513
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
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ANSWERS TO AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S QUESTIONS
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. . . . 515
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION, SPEECH AT A MOSCOW CONFERENCE OF FACTORY COMMITTEES, TRADE UNIONS AND
REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MOSCOW CENTRAL WORKERS’
CO-OPERATIVE . JULY 30, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
520
SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL-RUSSIA CONGRESS OF WORKERS
IN EDUCATION AND SOCIALIST CULTURE . JULY 31, 1919 . . . .
532
IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS
I
II
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
SPEECH AT A NON-PARTY CONFERENCE OF WORKERS AND MEN
OF THE RED ARMY . AUGUST 6, 1919 . Newspaper Report . . . .
First Version .
Second Version
547
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
TO COMRADES SERRATI AND LAZZARI
. . . . . . . . . . . 551
13
CONTENTS
LETTER TO THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS APROPOS OF THE
VICTORY OVER KOLCHAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
552
LETTER TO SYLVIA PANKHURST
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
561
FREEDOM TO TRADE IN GRAIN
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
567
The Basic Condition for Victory . .
The True Road to Victory . . . . .
What Is Freedom to Trade in Grain?
Notes
. . . . . . . . 567
. . . . . . . . 568
. . . . . . . . 570
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The Life and Work of V. I. Lenin. Outstanding Dates
571
. . . . 589
ILLUSTRATIONS
First page of Lenin’s manuscript “Agrarian Section of the
Programme” . 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 - 39
First page of Lenin’s manuscript “A Great Beginning” . June
28, 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
410 - 11
15
PREFACE
Volume Twenty-Nine covers the period from March to
August 1919. The material for the “Draft Programme of
the R.C.P.(B.)” was written in February and March 1919;
it has been placed before the documents of the Eighth
Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) with which it is directly
connected.
The volume consists mainly of reports and speeches
delivered at congresses, conferences and meetings. They
reflect Lenin’s activity as a statesman and deal with major
issues of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet
Government in that period—the defence of the socialist
country, the attitude towards the middle peasants and the
combating of economic difficulties.
The reports and speeches at the Eighth Congress of the
R.C.P.(B.) make up a large section of the volume; they
include the report of the Central Committee, the report
on the Party Programme and the speech closing the debate
on the Programme and the report on work in the countryside.
A number of items—the “Report on the Domestic and
Foreign Situation of the Soviet Republic” delivered to
the Extraordinary Plenary Meeting of the Moscow Soviet on
April 3, 1919, the “Letter to the Petrograd Workers on Aid
for the Eastern Front”, “Theses of the Central Committee
of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the Situation on the Eastern Front”, “Report on the Tasks of the
Trade Unions in the Mobilisation for the Eastern Front”
delivered to a Plenary Meeting of the All-Russia Central
Council of Trade Unions on April 11, 1919, speech on “The
Fight Against Kolchak” at a Conference of Moscow Factory
Committees and Trade Unions on April 17, 1919, and
16
PREFACE
others—are devoted to the mobilisation of the working
class and the working people as a whole to fight Kolchak.
In his “Letter to the Workers and Peasants Apropos of
the Victory over Kolchak” Lenin formulates the main tasks
of strengthening the defence potential of the Soviet Republic
as suggested by the experience of the victorious struggle
against Kolchak.
In his report “The Present Situation and the Immediate
Tasks of Soviet Power” delivered to a joint meeting of the
All-Russia Central Executive Committee, the Moscow
Soviet of Workers’ and Red Army Deputies, the All-Russia
Council of Trade Unions, and representatives of Moscow
factory committees on July 4, 1919, “Report on the Domestic
and Foreign Situation of the Republic” delivered to the
Moscow Conference of the R.C.P.(B.) on July 12, 1919,
the speech on “The Food and War Situation” at the Moscow
Conference of Factory Committees, Trade Unions and representatives of the Moscow Central Workers’ Co-operative
delivered on July 30, 1919, and others, Lenin calls on the
people to muster their forces for the struggle against Denikin.
In these, as in other speeches in this volume, Lenin explains
the principles of the Soviet food policy and outlines measures
to improve the food situation in the country.
In “The Third International and Its Place in History”,
“The Tasks of the Third International” and other articles,
Lenin shows the epoch-making significance of the Communist International and defines its tasks.
In the speech on the “Deception of the People with
Slogans of Freedom and Equality” delivered at the First
All-Russia Congress on Adult Education on May 19, 1919,
and the “Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Workers
in Education and Socialist Culture” delivered on July 31,
1919, Lenin develops the Marxist theory of the dictatorship
of the proletariat and shows the contrast between proletarian and bourgeois democracy.
Lenin’s lecture on “The State”, delivered at the Sverdlov
Communist University, explains the fundamentals of the
Marxist-Leninist doctrine of the state, its origin, nature
and historical forms.
The volume includes Lenin’s well-known pamphlet A
Great Beginning in which he appraises the role of the early
PREFACE
17
communist subbotniks and shows the decisive importance
of high labour productivity to the victory of communism.
In this volume there are fifteen new documents that had
not previously been published in a Russian edition of the
Collected Works. In his “Replies to Written Questions”
handed up at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on March 12,
1919, Lenin speaks of the work of the Council of People’s
Commissars. Among writings published for the first time
are “Draft C.C. Directives on Army Unity”, “Draft Decision
of the C.C. R.C.P.(B.) on the Petrograd Front” and a telegram to the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukraine.
These documents reflect Lenin’s work to strengthen the
Soviet state and its defence.
In the appeal “Beware of Spies!” Lenin proposes greater
revolutionary vigilance to combat counter-revolution.
The C.C. R.C.P.(B.) letter “All Out for the Fight Against
Denikin !” sets the task of reforming all public offices on
military lines and transforming the country into a single
military camp to organise the victory over Denikin.
The “Addendum to the Draft Appeal to German Workers
and to Peasants Who Do not Exploit the Labour of Others”
points out the growing sympathy for the Soviet state on
the part of working people all over the world, and describes
the leaders of the Second International as traitors to socialism and accomplices in the crimes of the bourgeoisie.
A telegram to the Chairman of the Council of People’s
Commissars of the Ukraine (end of April 1919) was not included in earlier Russian editions.
Some new documents have been included under the heading “Draft Programme of the R.C.P.(B.)”—the “Rough Draft
of the Programme of the R.C.P.”, published according to
typewritten and manuscript copies, which covers all sections
of the programme; the section on “The Basic Tasks of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Russia” was first printed in
full in the Fourth Russian edition. The volume also includes
the “Insertion for the Final Draft of the Programme Section
on the National Question” and the “Draft Programme of
the R.C.P. (Bolsheviks)” which is made up of the first
sections of the draft Programme as subsequently edited
by Lenin.
19
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
MARCH 12, 1919
1
REPORT ON THE FOREIGN AND HOME POLICY
OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS
BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT
(Lenin’s appearance on the platform is greeted by a lengthy
ovation. All rise.)
“This hall reminds me of the first time I spoke at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, when the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries still ruled it. We have forgotten
the recent past too soon, but today, the way the revolution
is developing in other countries reminds us of what we
experienced not so long ago. Formerly it was assumed that in
the West, where class antagonisms are much more developed,
because of the more intensive development of capitalism,
the revolution would proceed on lines differing somewhat
from those of this country, and that power would pass
directly from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Events in
Germany, however, indicate the contrary. The German bourgeoisie have united to counteract the masses of the proletariat who have raised their heads; they acquire strength from
the greater experience gained by the Western bourgeoisie,
and are waging a systematic struggle against the proletariat.
The German revolutionary masses, however, still lack experience, and can gain it only in the course of this struggle.
Everybody remembers the revolution of 1905, when the
Russian proletariat entered the struggle without any previous
experience. In the present revolution, however, we have
taken into account and made use of the experience we gained
in the revolution of 1905.”
Lenin then proceeded to review the work of the Council
of People’s Commissars. He recalled the first period of the
20
V. I. L E N I N
revolution when the masses did not yet know what to do and
still lacked sufficiently authoritative and powerful guiding
centres.
“We knew perfectly well,” Lenin continued, “that to
achieve success in the struggle that had been started the
greatest possible cohesion of the exploited masses and all
elements of the entire working population was essential,
and this inevitably brought us face to face with the question
of forms of organisation. We remembered very well the
part the Soviets had played in 1905, and revived them as the
most suitable means of uniting the working people in their
struggle against the exploiters. Before the revolution
in Germany we always said that the Soviets were the most
suitable organs of government for Russia. At that time
we could not say that they were equally suitable for the
West, but events have shown that they are. We see that Soviets are gaining popularity in the West, and that the fight
for them is going on not only in Europe, but also in
America. Soviet-type councils are being set up everywhere,
and sooner or later they will take power into their own
hands.
“The present situation in America, where such councils are
being set up, is extremely interesting. Perhaps the movement
there will not develop as it is developing in this country,
but the important thing is that there, too, the Soviet form
of organisation has gained extensive popularity. This form
has superseded all other forms of proletarian organisation.
The anarchists were formerly opposed to all government but
after they had got to know the Soviet form they accepted it,
and thereby demolished the whole theory of anarchism,
which repudiates every form of government. Two years ago
the compromising idea of collaboration with the bourgeoisie
was dominant in our Soviets. A certain amount of time
was required to clear the minds of the masses of the old
rubbish that prevented them from understanding what
was going on. This could be achieved only when the Soviets
had undertaken the practical work of building the state.
The masses of the workers in Germany are now in the same
position, and their minds, too, must be cleared of the same
old rubbish, although in that country the process is more
intense, cruel and bloody than in Russia.
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
21
“I have digressed somewhat from the subject on which
the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet has asked me to speak,
but this could not be helped.
“The activities of the Council of People’s Commissars
during the past year can be understood only by appraising
the role of the Soviets in the light of the world revolution.
Often the minor daily affairs of administration and the
inevitable petty problems of the work of organisation distract
our attention and make us forget the great cause of the world
revolution. But only by gauging the role of the Soviets on a
world scale can we properly understand the minor details of
the internal life of our country, and regulate them in proper
time. The bigwig inspectors from Berne 1 say that we advocate
violence, but they deliberately shut their eyes to the practices
of their own bourgeoisie which governs exclusively with
the aid of violence.
“Before we adopted the Soviet form of government there
was a period of several months during which the masses
prepared themselves for this new, hitherto unprecedented
form of government. We tore the Kerensky government to
shreds; we compelled the Provisional Government to keep
on changing its Cabinet, to jump from right to left, up
and down, and this definitely proved to the masses that the
clique of compromisers with bourgeoisie who claimed
the right to power at that time were unfit to govern the country, and only after this did we take power into our hands.
“The matter is much more complicated when taken on a
world scale. In that case, revolutionary violence is not
enough; revolutionary violence must be preceded by a period
of preparation, like the one we passed through, but of somewhat longer duration, of course. At one time the Treaty of
Brest 2 was a vexed question, and certain gentlemen called it
a compromise and decided to take advantage of this step of the
Soviet government to serve their demagogic aims. But if
this is called a compromise, it would also be correct to say
that we compromised with the tsar when we went into the
State Duma in order to disrupt it from within. We concluded the Treaty of Brest because we expected the development
of conditions in Germany that would bring about the overthrow of Wilhelm, and this shows how correct our calculations
were.
22
V. I. L E N I N
“In the Entente 3 countries we see the awakening of the
masses which the governments of these countries are doing
their utmost to prevent. For this purpose the thoughts of
the as yet politically unenlightened masses are being
diverted to ‘patriotic’ channels. The masses are being lured
by promises of the advantages of a victorious peace, they are
being promised incalculable blessings when peace is concluded. They are being sustained with illusions. But the extent
to which these illusions are likely to become reality may be
gauged by the conversation I had recently with an American,
a shrewd and level-headed businessman, whose interests differ entirely from ours. He described the situation in France
as follows. The French Government is promising the masses
piles of gold which, it claims, will be obtained from the Germans but the Germans have to have something to pay with,
for if a debtor has nothing, nothing can be got from him and
all the illusions based on the prospect of concluding an advantageous peace with Germany will be dispelled, for the peace
that has been concluded will be a bankrupt peace. Even the
enemies of the revolution realise this, for they see no way out
of the present situation except the overthrow of capitalism.
In this respect the temper of the Paris crowds, which are
extremely sensitive and responsive, is typical. Six months
ago people were quite tolerant towards speakers at meetings
who roundly abused the Bolsheviks. But now, if any speaker
dares to say anything against the Bolsheviks, they refuse to
give him a hearing. The bourgeoisie have helped us a great
deal to popularise our ideas. Their attacks on us made the
masses think and discuss and, as a consequence, those of the
masses of Paris who are able to think for themselves have
come to the conclusion that since the bourgeoisie detest the
Bolsheviks so much the Bolsheviks must know how to fight
them. The Entente has now turned its attention to us and
wants to pay the bills it owes out of our pocket. We have to
reckon with a powerful enemy whose military strength is
superior to ours, but not for long. Disillusionment with the
victory is bound to set in, and this will lead to the collapse
of all the ‘Allied’ machinations, that is, if they do not
quarrel with each other before that. All countries are now
suffering from hunger and no victory will help overcome it.
We are confronted with complicated problems of foreign
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
23
policy. In this respect we have the experience of the Brest
peace, the most important step in the foreign policy of the
Council of People’s Commissars. The Brest peace was concluded with a powerful enemy who was far superior to us in
military strength, and this caused disagreement even in our
own ranks, but the proletarian state had to take such a
first step because it was surrounded on all sides by
imperialist predators. The Brest peace sapped the strength
of our powerful enemy. In a very short time the Germany
which had forced these predatory terms upon us collapsed, and the same the awaits the other countries, the
more so that everywhere we see the armies falling to
pieces.
“We must recall the time when the disintegration of our
army was ascribed to the impatience of the Russians, but
this seems to be the lot of all countries that take the path of
revolution. The downright robbery now being perpetrated
by the ‘democratic’ governments in Paris is opening the eyes
of the masses, the more so that their bickering over the spoils,
which at times grows into a serious quarrel, is no longer
a secret. 4 Unfavourable though the conditions under which
Soviet Russia exists may be, we have this one advantage,
which even the bourgeois Times lays stress upon. In an article
written by its military expert it spoke of the growing disintegration of the armies of all countries except Russia. According to the Times, Russia is the only country in which the
army is not falling to pieces but is being built up. This
has been one of the most important features of our development during the past year. We are surrounded by enemies,
we are defending ourselves and fighting to regain every inch
of Soviet Russia’s territory, and every month of struggle
brings us nearer and nearer to the world revolution. We were
the first in the world to take power, and today Soviets of
working people govern our country. Shall we succeed in retaining power? If we do not, it will prove that historically
we were not justified in seizing power. But today we can be
justly proud of having withstood this test and of having
upheld the power of the working people in spite of the incalculable suffering we have been compelled to undergo.”
Lenin then went on to deal with the question of the
specialists.
24
V. I. L E N I N
Some of our comrades, he said, express indignation at
the fact that former officers and others who served the tsar
are at the head of the Red Army. “Naturally, in organising
the Red Army this question acquires special significance and
success in this work depends on its correct presentation.
But the question of specialists must be discussed on a broader
scale. We must make use of them in all spheres of organisa
ion, wherever we, lacking the experience and scientific training of the old bourgeois specialists, are ourselves naturally
unable to cope with our tasks. We are not utopians who
think that socialist Russia must be built up by men of a new
type; we must utilise the material we have inherited from the
old capitalist world. We are placing people of the old type in
new conditions, keeping them under proper control, under
the vigilant supervision of the proletariat, and making them
do the work we need. This is the only way we can build.
If you are unable to erect the edifice with the materials
bequeathed to us by the bourgeois world, you will not be
able to build it at all, and you will not be Communists, but
mere phrase-mongers. For the purpose of building socialism,
we must make the fullest use of the science, technology and,
in general, everything that capitalist Russia bequeathed to
us. Of course there will be great difficulties in our way.
Mistakes are inevitable. There are deserters and deliberate
saboteurs everywhere. Against these, force had to be the
primary weapon. But after that we must make use of the
moral weight of the proletariat, strong organisation and discipline. There is no need whatever to reject useful specialists, but they must be kept within definite limits so that the
proletariat can keep them under control. They must be entrusted with certain work, but a vigilant eye must also be
kept on them, commissars must be placed over them to thwart
their counter-revolutionary scheming. At the same time we
must also learn from them. Above all, no political concessions
whatever must be made to these gentlemen whose services
we are using wherever possible. We have already succeeded
in doing this to some extent. We have passed from the
stage of suppressing the capitalists to the stage of using their
services, and this, perhaps, is one of the most important
achievements in the field of internal development during
the past year.
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
25
“One of the most serious problems affecting our cultural
development is that of the rural districts. Soviet power presupposes the widest possible support of the working people.
This sums up our entire rural policy during this period. It
was necessary to link up the urban proletariat with the rural
poor, and this we have done. Today they are most intimately
connected by thousands of imperceptible threads. Here, as
elsewhere, we encounter considerable difficulties, for the peasants are accustomed to feel that they are independent proprietors. They are accustomed to sell their grain freely, and
every peasant regarded this as his inalienable right. Now a
tremendous effort is needed to convince them definitely that
only by means of the communist organisation of production
shall we be able to cope with the devastation caused by the
war. This must be done by persuasion and not by force. Of
course, among the peasants too we have open enemies, the
kulaks; but the bulk of the poor peasants, and of the middle
peasants who are close to them, are on our side. Against the
kulaks, who are our inveterate enemies, we have but one
weapon—force. When we began to carry out our food policy
on the principle that the peasants must surrender their
surplus stocks for the benefit of the famine-stricken, some
people began to shout to the peasants: ‘They’re robbing
you!’ These were the inveterate enemies of the peasants,
workers and communism, enemies arrayed in Menshevik,
Left Socialist-Revolutionary, or other clownish costumes,
and these we shall continue to treat in the same way as we
have treated them up to now.”
Severnaya Kommuna No. 5 8 ,
March 1 4 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Severnaya Kommuna text
26
V. I. L E N I N
2
REPLIES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS
Comrades, I now want to reply to the written questions,
two of which are not quite clear. However, one of them
appears to contain two main ideas. In the first place, its
author has a grudge against the Bolsheviks who went at
things with a rush, and sympathises with the Mensheviks
because of their love of the gradual. Secondly, he asks about
peasant revolts.
Insofar as concerns the first question, let me say that if
you make this sort of accusation against the Bolsheviks you
must say what they did in a rush, and what is good about
gradualness. The main thing that distinguishes us from the
Mensheviks was our insistence on the transfer of all power
to the Soviets and we rushed things to such an extent that
in October of the year before last we took power. The Mensheviks advocated procrastination since they did not desire
that transfer of power. The well-known socialist Kautsky,
for instance, a man who sympathises with the Mensheviks,
said in a pamphlet in August 1918 that the Bolsheviks should
not take power because they would not be able to hold out,
that they would perish and in that way destroy a whole
party. I think that view has been disproved by the course
of events and that it is not worth while wasting time on it,
especially as there have not been any clear objections. In
Germany, Kautsky insisted on democracy, on a Constituent
Assembly. The German Mensheviks and ours said that power
should not be given to the Soviets. The Constituent Assembly
assembled in Germany, and in January and March there
were several huge workers’ revolts, a civil war, the result of
which was that the German Mensheviks, headed by Hilferding, proposed in recent articles to combine the Constituent
Assembly with Workers’ Councils in such a way as to give
the Central Committee of the Councils the right to hold up
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
27
decisions made by the Constituent Assembly and submit questions to a plebiscite. This shows that the German Mensheviks,
even the best of them, are in an absolute muddle. The idea
of combining the Constituent Assembly and the Workers’
Councils, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat, deserves nothing but ridicule.
With regard to the peasant revolts—there is a question
on that subject here. We have, of course, experienced a number of kulak revolts and they are still occurring. Last summer
there was a whole string of them. The kulak is our implacable enemy. And here we can hope for nothing unless we crush
him. The middle peasant is a different case, he is not our
enemy. It is not true that there have been peasant revolts
in Russia that involved a large number of peasants who were
not kulaks. An individual village or a volost does join the
kulaks, but under Soviet power there have been no peasant
revolts that involved all the peasants in Russia. There have
been kulak revolts and there will be more under a government that insists on surplus grain being sold to the hungry at
fixed prices. Such revolts are inevitable because the kulak
who has a big stock of grain can sell it at several hundred
rubles a pood; we all know what prices the food profiteers
are getting. If we allow the kulaks so much freedom, the
rich man who has a secret cache of Kerensky paper money 5
will fill his belly, but the majority who have nothing hidden
will go hungry. And so we do not close our eyes to the inevitability of kulak revolts against Soviet power. When the
capitalists were in power workers’ revolts against them and
peasant revolts against the landowners were inevitable.
Now that the landowners and capitalists have been smashed
kulak revolts will occur less and less frequently. You have to
take your choice. If there is anyone who wants everything to
go smoothly without any revolts, who wants the rich people
to hand us a declaration of love on a salver and promise to
hand over all surpluses peacefully, I don’t think we can
take him seriously.
The other unclear note contains the following. What is to
be done when workers, misled by the appeals of the SocialistRevolutionaries, do not work, go on strike, and come out
against Soviet power because of the food shortage? I cannot,
of course, count on all workers, down to the last, supporting
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V. I. L E N I N
Soviet power. When the Paris workers revolted in 1871,
quite a large number of workers in other towns fought against
them in the whiteguard troops and crushed the Paris workers. That did not prevent politically-conscious socialists
from asserting that the Paris Communards represented the
entire proletariat, that is, all that was best and honest—only
backward sections of the workers served in the whiteguard
troops. We, too, have backward workers who are not politically conscious and who have not yet understood Soviet
power; we are doing our best to enlighten them. No other
government has satisfied the demands for standing representative bodies of workers to the extent the Soviets have,
which are willing to give any representative of a factory a
place in a government institution. We are, as far as possible,
drawing workers into the implementation of the policy of
the state; under capitalism, even in republics, the workers
were kept out of it but Soviet power does its best to attract
workers, although some of them will feel the attraction
of the old for quite a long time to come.
There are very few people among you, probably only an
individual or two, who remember serfdom; only very old
people can remember that, but there are people who remember
what things were like thirty or forty years ago. Anyone who
was in the rural districts knows that some thirty years ago
there were quite a number of old people in the villages who
said, “It was better under serfdom, there was more order,
things were strict and the women did not dress extravagantly.” If you now read Gleb Uspensky—we are erecting a monument to him as one of the best writers about peasant life—
you will find descriptions dating back to the eighties and
nineties of honest old peasants and sometimes just ordinary
elderly people who said frankly that it had been better under
serfdom. When an old social order is destroyed it cannot be
destroyed immediately in the minds of all people, there will
always be some who are drawn to the old.
Some workers, printers, for instance, say that capitalism
was good, there were a lot of newspapers whereas now there
are few, in those days they earned a decent wage and they do
not want any socialism. There were quite a number of
branches of industry that depended on the rich classes or on
the production of articles of luxury. Under capitalism quite
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
29
a number of workers in big cities lived by producing articles
of luxury. In the Soviet Republic we shall have to leave these
workers unemployed for a time. We shall say to them, “Get
down to some other, useful work.” And the worker will say,
“I did delicate work, I was a jeweller, it was clean work,
I worked for gentlemen; now the muzhik is in power, the
gentlemen have been scattered and I want to go back to
capitalism.” Such people will preach going back to capitalism, or, as the Mensheviks say, going forward to healthy
capitalism and sound democracy. A few hundred workers
are to be found who will say, “We lived well under a healthy
capitalism.” The people who lived well under capitalism were
an insignificant minority—we defend the interests of the
majority that lived badly under capitalism. (Applause.)
Healthy capitalism led to world slaughter in the countries
with the greatest freedom. There can be no healthy capitalism, there can be capitalism of the sort obtaining in the
freest republic, one like the American republic, cultured,
rich, technically developed; and that democratic and most
republican capitalism, led to the most savage world slaughter
over the plunder of the whole world. Out of fifteen million
workers you will find a few thousand who lived well under
capitalism. In the rich countries there are more such workers
because they work for a greater number of millionaires and
multimillionaires. They served that handful and received
particularly high wages from them. Take hundreds of British
millionaires—they have accumulated thousands of millions
because they have plundered India and a large number of
colonies. It meant nothing to them to make gifts to 10,000
or 20,000 workers, giving them double or higher wages so that
they would work well for them. I once read the reminiscences
of an American barber whom a multimillionaire paid a dollar
a day to shave him. And that barber wrote a whole book praising that multimillionaire and his own wonderful life. For
a daily visit of one hour to his financial majesty he received
a dollar, was satisfied and did not want anything but capitalism. We have to be on our guard against such an argument.
The vast majority of workers were not in such a position. We,
the Communists of the whole world, defend the interests of the
vast majority of working people, and it was a small minority
of working people whom the capitalists bribed with high
30
V. I. L E N I N
wages and made them the loyal servants of capital. Under
serfdom there were people, peasants, who said to the landowners, “We are your slaves (that was after emancipation), we
shall not leave you.” Were there many of them? An insignificant few. Can you deny that there was a struggle against
serfdom by reference to them? Of course not. And today communism cannot be denied by reference to the minority of
workers who earned good money on bourgeois newspapers,
on the production of articles of luxury and for their personal
services to multimillionaires.
I shall now deal with the questions that were presented
clearly, first of all with the question of concessions in general and of the Great Northern Railway 6 in particular.
It is said that it would be allowing predators to plunder
the wealth of the nation. In answer to this I say that the
question is closely connected with bourgeois specialists
and the question of world imperialism. Can we smash world
imperialism today? It would be our duty to do it if we could,
but you know that we cannot do it today any more than
we could have overthrown Kerensky in March 1917; we had to
wait for the Soviet organisations to develop, we had to work
for that and not revolt against Kerensky immediately. And
today, is an offensive war against world imperialism any
more possible? Of course not. If we had been strong enough,
if we could have obtained a lot of grain quickly, and had
machinery and so on, we would not have allowed the Scheidemanns to mow down the Spartacists 7 but would have kicked
them out. Today, however, that is misplaced fantasy, today
our country alone cannot overthrow world imperialism;
other countries are experiencing a period in which there is
no Soviet majority and in many countries Soviets are only
just beginning to appear so that we have to make concessions to imperialism. Today we cannot build railways on a
large scale—God grant that we can handle those already
existing. We are short of grain and fuel, we have not got
enough locomotives, several million poods of grain are lying
on the Volga-Bugulma Railway and we cannot bring it
away. In the Council of People’s Commissars a few days ago
we passed a decision to send representatives with extensive
powers to get the grain away from there. The people are
hungry in Petrograd and Moscow while millions of poods of
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
31
grain are stored there and we cannot get them away because
we have not got enough locomotives and there is no fuel.
And we say that it is better to pay tribute to foreign
capitalists as long as they build railways. We shall not
perish on account of that tribute but if we do not organise
railway transport we may perish because the people are
hungry; great as the endurance of the Russian worker
may be, there is a limit to it. It is, therefore, our duty
to take measures to improve railway facilities even at
the expense of paying tribute to capitalism. Good or bad,
there is so far no choice. We shall not ruin Soviet power
by paying tribute to world capitalism until it is finally overthrown. We paid gold to the German imperialists, we had
to under the terms of the Treaty of Brest, and now the
Entente countries are taking that gold away from them—the
victorious bandit is robbing the defeated bandit. We say
today that as long as the world movement of the proletariat
does not bring victory we shall either fight or pay those
bandits to buy them off and do not see anything bad in it.
While we were buying off the German bandits by paying
them a few hundred million we strengthened our Red Army,
but the German bandits now have nothing left. That’s what
will happen to other imperialist bandits. (Applause.)
The comrade adds that he was under arrest for four days
for opposing the ruin of the middle peasants; he asks what
the middle peasant is and refers to a number of peasant
revolts. If the comrade was arrested for protesting against the
ruin of the middle peasants that was, of course, incorrect,
and judging by his speedy release I imagine that either the
one who arrested him or some other representative of Soviet
power found the action incorrect. Now about the middle
peasant. He differs from the kulak in not exploiting the labour
of others. The kulak steals other people’s money and other
people’s labour. The poor peasants, the semi-proletarians,
are those who are themselves exploited; the middle peasant
does not exploit other people, gets his living from his own
farm, has approximately enough grain, is no kulak but is
not to be classed as poor either. Such peasants waver between
us and the kulaks. A few of them may become kulaks if
they are lucky, that is why they are attracted to the kulaks,
but the majority of them will never be kulaks. If the social-
32
V. I. L E N I N
ists and Communists are able to talk intelligently to the middle peasant they can prove to him that the Soviet government is more advantageous than any other, because other
governments oppress and crush the middle peasant. The middle peasant, however, wavers. Today he is for us, tomorrow
for some other power; partly for us and partly for the bourgeoisie. In the programme we shall adopt in a few days we
are against any kind of force in respect of the middle peasant.
Our Party makes this declaration. If there are arrests we
condemn them and will put matters right. In respect of the
kulak we are for force but in respect of the middle peasant
we are against force. To him we say, “If you are on the side of
Soviet power we shall not drive you into a commune by force,
we have never forced peasants into communes and no decree to
that effect exists.” If it happens in the localities, it is abuse of
power for which the people in office are removed and indicted.
This is a big question. The middle peasant stands between
two camps. But, comrades, in this case the policy is quite
clear—we are against force where the middle peasants are
concerned, we favour agreement with them, we favour
concessions to them. The middle peasant can and will come
to communism by a slow journey. In the freest capitalist
republic the middle peasant is threatened by capital that
oppresses and crushes him in some way or other.
The next note asks my opinion of the Baltic Fleet. I have
not studied the question of the Baltic Fleet and cannot
answer at the moment; the speech by the comrade from the
fleet probably exhausted that question.
Then there is a question about the mouldiness, moss and
red tape that has grown in the localities and about the need
to fight it. That is perfectly true. When the October Revolution kicked out the old bureaucrats it did so because it had
created the Soviets. It turned out the old judges and made the
court a people’s court. The court could have been simplified; for this there was no need to know the old laws but simply to be guided by a sense of justice. It was easy to get rid of
bureaucratic methods in the courts. In other areas it was
much more difficult. We threw out the old bureaucrats, but
they have come back, they call themselves “commonists”
when they can’t bear to say the word Communist, and they
wear a red ribbon in their buttonholes and creep into warm
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
33
corners. What to do about it? We must fight this scum again
and again and if the scum has crawled back we must again and
again clean it up, chase it out, keep it under the surveillance
of communist workers and peasants whom we have known
for more than a month and for more than a year. There is
still another question here, a note which says that it is a
bad thing to give advantages to members of the Party because
scoundrels will worm their way in. We are fighting against
that and will continue to do so, comrades; we have passed a
decision not to allow members who have been in the Party
less than a year to be delegates to a Party congress; we
shall continue to adopt such measures. When a party is in
power it has to give preference to its members—let us
suppose that two men apply, one of them shows a Party membership card and the other has no Party card and both of
them are equally unknown; it is natural that preference
should be given to the Party member, the one who has the
Party card. How can one really decide whether a person is
in the Party because of his convictions or for gain? The
date he joined the Party must be entered on his Party card,
he must not be given the card until he has been tested, until
he has been through probation, etc.
There is also a note about the revolutionary tax 8 to the
effect that it is a burden on the middle peasant. There
has been a special session on this question, there were many
complaints, and in order to verify them we did the following. We have a Central Statistical Board in which the best
specialists in statistics in Russia are employed, most of
them Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and even
Cadets; there are very few Communists, Bolsheviks—they
were more concerned with the fight against tsarism than
with practical work. As far as I have been able to see these
specialists are working satisfactorily, although that does
not mean that we do not have to fight against some individuals. We gave them the job of making probes in a few volosts
to see how the peasants have distributed the revolutionary
tax. There are very many complaints; when we realise, however, that they amount to about a thousand for the whole
country, then we see that it is an insignificant number for
Russia—if there are a thousand complaints to several million
farms that is a mere bagatelle; if three people a day come to
34
V. I. L E N I N
the Central Executive Committee that makes 90 complaints
a month, but it creates the impression that we are snowed
under with complaints. To check up on this we decided
to investigate a few volosts and we got a precise answer in
Popov’s report which was repeated at a sitting of the Central Executive Committee in the presence of workers. The
report showed that in the majority of cases the peasants
distribute the tax justly. Soviet power demands that the
poor do not pay anything, the middle peasants a moderate
amount and the rich peasants a lot, although it is, of course,
impossible to determine exactly who is rich and who is
poor and there have been mistakes, but on the whole the peasants distribute the tax correctly. That’s as it should be.
(Applause.) There have been mistakes, of course. For instance,
there was a petty clerk on the railway who complained
that the house committee had taxed him unjustly. He informed the Soviet authorities of this. And they said, search
his place, he is a profiteer. And they found several sacks
containing a million rubles in Kerensky notes. This will
continue until we have found a way of changing all the old
notes for new ones. When we change these notes for new ones
all the profiteers will be exposed. All of them will have to
change old notes for new. (Stormy applause.) If you present
the small amount of money necessary for a working man you
will get a ruble for a ruble, if you present one or two thousand—ruble for ruble. If you present more we shall give you
some of it in new money and the rest will go into a book—
you can wait for it. (Applause.) In order to do that sort
of thing we have to get the new notes ready. There are
about 60,000 million of the old money. We do not need to
change such a huge sum for new money, but specialists have
computed that we shall need no less than 20,000 million
rubles’ worth. We already have 17,000 million. (Applause.)
The question has been raised at the Council of People’s
Commissars of making the final preparations in the near
future for this measure that will strike a blow at the profiteers. This measure will expose those who are concealing
Kerensky notes. The measure will require a lot of organisational work, for it is no easy one.
Then there is a question on how matters stand with the
sowing, since it is difficult to get enough seed. That, of
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
35
course, is true. A Cultivated Land Committee 9 has been set
up. Here, at the Commissariat of Agriculture, a Working
Committee 10 has been formed in accordance with a Soviet
decree and its work will be organised jointly with the trade
unions. Its job will be to see that the land is not left vacant
and that any land left vacant by the landowners is given to
workers. There is an order to the effect that if the peasants
do not take the land the government will try to adapt it to
its needs. There is a shortage of seed, of course. In this case
the poor peasants must drag out into the open those kulaks
who have a hidden surplus grain and have not given it up
for seed. It is important to the kulak to conceal these surpluses
because he will get a thousand rubles a pood for it in the
hungry months and it does not worry him that grain will
not be planted and that he will be doing harm to thousands of
workers. He is an enemy of the people and he must be
exposed.
The next question is about wages; the specialist gets three
thousand, he goes from place to place and is difficult to
catch. I say this about the specialists—they are people
who have a knowledge of bourgeois science and engineering
at a higher level than the overwhelming majority of workers
and peasants; such specialists are needed and we say that at
the moment we cannot introduce equalitarian wages, and
are in favour of paying more than three thousand. Even if
we pay several million a year in wages it will not be too much
as long as we learn to work well with their help. We do not
see any other way of arranging things so that they do not
work under the lash, and as long as there are few specialists
we are compelled to retain high wages. I recently had a talk on
this question with Schmidt, the Commissar for Labour, and
he agrees with our policy and says that formerly, under
capitalism, the wages of an unskilled worker were 25 rubles
a month and those of a good specialist not less than 500
rubles, a ratio of 20 to 1; now the lowest wages amount to
600 rubles and the specialists get 3,000, a ratio of 5 to 1.
We have, therefore, done a lot to equalise low and high
wages and we shall continue in the same vein. At the moment
we cannot equalise wages and as long as there are few specialists we shall not refuse to raise their wages. We say that it
is better to pay out an extra million or a thousand million
36
V. I. L E N I N
as long as we can employ all the specialists, for what they
will teach our workers and peasants is worth more than that
thousand million.
Next comes a question about agricultural communes and
whether former landowners can be allowed to remain in
them. That depends on what the landowner was like. There
has been no decree forbidding the landowner admission to
the commune. The landowner, of course, does not inspire
confidence because he has been oppressing the peasants for
centuries and they hate him, but if there are landowners
that the peasants know as decent people you not only can
but must admit them. We must use such specialists, they are
used to organising big farms and there is a lot they can
teach peasants and farm workers.
Then it is asked whether the middle peasants should be
allowed on public ploughlands. Of course they should. Whole
uyezds have recently decided to go over to collective ploughing—to what extent it will be carried out I don’t know; for
this it is important to attract the middle peasants, because
the poor peasants are on our side but the middle peasants—
not always, and they have to be won over. We are in favour
of using force against the capitalists and against the landowners, and are not only in favour of the use of force but of the
confiscation of everything they have accumulated; we are in
favour of the use of force against the kulak, but not of his
complete expropriation, because he farms the land and part
of what he has accumulated comes from his own labour.
This is a difference that must be fully understood. The complete expropriation of the landowner and capitalists; not all
the property of the kulak can be confiscated, there has been
no such order; we want to convince the middle peasant and
draw him over to us by example and persuasion. That is
our programme. If there are deviations from it in the localities, they are infringements of the decrees of Soviet power
either by people who do not want to carry out our decrees
or by those who do not understand them.
Then there is a question on how to smarten up the railway workers, and also about the cessation of traffic on the
railways. This question has been heatedly discussed by the
Council of People’s Commissars and many measures have
been adopted. This is a fundamental question. Millions of
SESSION OF THE PETROGRAD SOVIET
37
poods of grain are lying on the Volga-Bugulma Railway and
may be ruined because in some places the grain is lying in
the snow and when the thaw sets in the grain will be spoiled.
It is already damp (up to 20 per cent humidity). This grain
must be brought away or it will be destroyed. The main
thing is that the railwaymen themselves are badly in need
of grain. For this purpose it will be necessary, according to
the estimate of our comrades in the Commissariat of Railways,
to stop passenger traffic from March 18 to April 10. This
cancelling of passenger traffic can give us the three and a
half million poods of grain that can be brought out using
even light passenger locomotives. If profiteers were to
carry grain on those trains they would, at most, bring half
a million poods. Those who complain about the cessation of
passenger traffic are not in the right. Profiteers would, at
best, transport half a million poods and we shall bring in
three and a half million, if we fill the cars with grain and
if the railwaymen help us, and in this way we shall improve
the food situation. That is why we say that all comrades
who are more developed and more organised must work for
the war and for food. Give us people again and again, no matter how difficult it may be. We know very well that Petrograd has given more people than any other town in Russia,
because the most developed and best organised workers are
in Petrograd. This, however, is going to be a difficult six
months. The first half-year of 1918 produced 27 million
poods, and in the second we got 67 million poods. We have
reached a hungry half-year. March, April, May and June
will be difficult months. We must bend all efforts to prevent
this. The question must be raised at every factory and at every
study circle of whether there is a man who can be sent to
work at a railway workshop and replaced by a woman,
and if there is, to send him to that work. In every study
circle, in every group and in every organisation thought must
be given to this, new workers must be supplied if we are to
cope with this difficult half-year. (Applause.)
First published in the Fourth
(Russian) Edition of the Collected
Works according
to the verbatim report
38
SESSION OF THE FIRST CONGRESS
OF FARM LABOURERS
OF PETROGRAD GUBERNIA 11
MARCH 13, 1919
1
SPEECH ON THE ORGANISATION
OF A FARM LABOURERS’ UNION
Comrades, I am very glad to be able on behalf of the Council of People’s Commissars to greet this Congress of Farm
Labourers, the object of which is to form a farm labourers’
union.
Comrades, the Central Committee of our Party and the
All-Russia Council of Trade Unions have on more than one
occasion held joint conferences with Comrade Schmidt,
People’s Commissar for Labour, members of the All-Russia
Council of Trade Unions and others, to discuss how to set
about organising farm labourers. Nowhere in the world, even
in the most advanced capitalist countries, where trade unions
have existed not only for decades but for centuries, have
farm labourers succeeded in forming anything like permanent trade unions. You know how the conditions of life of
the peasants and farm labourers hamper this and the fact
that they are scattered and disunited is a great obstacle, so
that it is far more difficult for them than for urban workers
to unite in a trade union.
The workers’ and peasants’ government, however, has
set to work all along the line to build communist society. It
has not only set out to make a clean sweep of the landowners
and capitalists—this has been almost completely achieved—
but has set out to build a society in which there will
FIRST CONGRESS OF FARM LABOURERS
39
never again be landowners and capitalists. There has been
more than one instance in the history of revolutions where,
soon after the old landowners and capitalists were swept
away, new capitalists sprang up from the ranks of the kulaks,
the wealthy peasants, profiteers, who, in many cases, exploited the workers more than the old landowners and capitalists
did. The task that confronts us is to sweep away the old
capitalists and to make it impossible for new ones to emerge;
to see to it that power remains fully, entirely and exclusively
in the hands of those who work, who live by their own labour.
How can this be done? There is only one way, and that is
by organising the rural workers, the proletarians. This organisation must be permanent. Only in a permanent, mass
organisation can farm labourers learn the business of managing large-scale farms; for if they do not learn to do this themselves, nobody will do it for them. You remember the words
to this effect in our anthem, the Internationale. The most the
Soviet government can do is to give such an organisation
every assistance. The capitalist organisations did everything
in their power, resorted to every lawful means, various
ruses, police devices, honest and dishonest schemes to prevent
labourers from organising. To this day in Germany, the most
advanced country in Europe, farm labourers are deprived of
the right to organise. There, the ancient master and servant
law is still in force, and farm labourers continue to have the
status of servants. Quite recently I had a conversation with a
prominent Englishman who came to Russia during the war.
In the past he sided with capitalism, but in the course of
our revolution he developed splendidly, first into a Menshevik and later into a Bolshevik. During our conversation we
discussed labour conditions in England—there are no peasants
in England, there are only big capitalists and farm workers—
and he said, “I am not hopeful, because our farm labourers live under feudal and not capitalist conditions; they are
so overburdened, crushed and ground down by toil, that it
is difficult for them to unite.” And this is in a most advanced
country, where a certain farm labourer attempted to form a
farm labourers’ union quite half a century ago. This is what
progress amounts to in the free capitalist countries! Our
government, however, decided to help to organise the rural and
other workers as soon as it came into being. We must render
40
V. I. L E N I N
every assistance. I am particularly pleased to note that here,
in Petrograd, where there are so many beautiful buildings,
palaces, which were not built for the right purposes, our
comrades have quite properly converted them into premises
for meetings, congresses and conferences of precisely those
classes of the population which worked to build them, which
have built them for centuries, but which were never allowed
to come within a mile of them! (Applause.) I think, comrades, that now that nearly all the palaces in Petrograd have
been converted into meeting halls and premises for unions
of workers—primarily urban, but also rural workers, the
working section of the peasantry—I think that we may regard this as a first step towards providing the working people, the formerly exploited section of the population, with the
opportunity to organise. I repeat, the Soviet government will
do all in its power immediately and unconditionally to
help such an organisation to remould rural life and leave
no room for kulaks or profiteers, so that co-operative labour,
labour in common, may become the general rule in the countryside. This is the task we have all set ourselves. You know
perfectly well how difficult this task is, that it is impossible
to change all the conditions of rural life by means of decrees,
laws and ordinances. It was possible by means of ordinances
and decrees to overthrow the landowners and capitalists, it
is possible by this means to curb the kulaks. But if the millions of farm labourers will not have their own organisation,
if they do not learn in this organisation, step by step, to
manage their own affairs, political and economic—and the
economic affairs are most important—if they do not learn
to manage large-scale farms and transform them—since they
enjoy a number of privileges which other farms do not—
from models of exploitation where formerly the workers had
their sweat and blood squeezed out of them, into model cooperative farms, the working people themselves will be to
blame for it. The old farms cannot now be restored. It is
impossible for us to provide ten good horses and ten good
ploughs for every hundred dessiatines of land (if we take
ten small farms of ten dessiatines each). We have not that
number of horses or ploughs left. But if the same hundred
dessiatines are cultivated on a large scale on the basis of cooperative or common tillage, or as a voluntary agricultural
FIRST CONGRESS OF FARM LABOURERS
41
commune, we shall need, probably, not ten horses and
ploughs, but only three. This is how a saving in human labour
and better results can be achieved. But there is only one way
to achieve this, and that is by an alliance of urban and rural
workers. The urban workers have taken power in the cities.
All the best that has been created in the cities in the shape
of palaces, fine buildings and culture, the workers place at
the disposal of the rural population, for they know that
their power in the cities cannot be durable unless a sound
alliance is established with the farm workers. Only such an
alliance, the foundations of which you are here laying down,
can make a permanent change possible. The middle peasants,
too, will voluntarily join this alliance. It will entail a vast
amount of effort, of course, but nothing can be done at one
stroke. If your union is formed, if it grows, develops and
spreads all over Russia, if it maintains the closest contact
with the urban workers’ union, we shall fulfil this difficult
task by the joint efforts of millions of organised farm and
urban workers and thus extricate ourselves from the state
of ruin into which we and all other nations were plunged by
the four years’ war. We shall emerge from this state, but we
shall not go back to the old system of individual and scattered production—this system of production condemns man to
ignorance, poverty, disunity; we shall organise collective,
large-scale, co-operative production. For this, all that human
knowledge, human skill and human invention have achieved,
all the knowledge of the specialists, must be devoted to the
service of the united workers. The workers must become the
masters in all fields; they must learn to be managers and to
direct those who up to now, like many agronomists, for example, acted as stewards for the capitalists against the workers.
This is no easy problem, but in the towns very much has been
done to solve it. You are now taking the first steps towards
solving this problem in the rural districts. Permit me to
conclude by repeating my greetings from the Council
of People’s Commissars and to express once again the firm
conviction that the union of which you are here laying the
foundations will in the near future grow into a united AllRussia Farm Labourers’ Union. This union will serve as a
genuine bulwark of Soviet power in the rural districts, as the
vanguard in the struggle to remould rural life in such a way
42
V. I. L E N I N
as to prevent the revival of any exploitation, of the rule
of the rich over the poor, on the basis of common, united,
co-operative labour. This is what I wish you, comrades.
(Applause.)
Brief report published
in Severnaya Kommuna No. 5 8 ,
March 1 4 , 1 9 1 9
First published in full in
the journal Rabotnik Zemli
i Lesa No. 4 - 5 , 1 9 2 3
Published according to
the verbatim report, verified
with the text in the journal
FIRST CONGRESS OF FARM LABOURERS
43
2
REPLIES TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS
Two notes have been handed up, both asking whether
workers in state farms are allowed to keep their own small
livestock, vegetable plots and poultry. I have just asked
for a copy of the act we recently discussed in the Council of
People’s Commissars and which was passed by the Central
Executive Committee. This act is entitled “Statute on
Socialist Land Settlement and the Measures for the
Transition to Socialist Farming”. I don’t know whether a
copy of this act is available here. I helped to draft it and
delivered a report on it to the Commission set up by the Central Executive Committee. If my memory does not betray
me—we have so many laws that one cannot remember them
all, and many more acts have been passed since then—I
think this act contains a clause which prohibits workers in
state farms from keeping their own livestock and holding
separate vegetable plots. I should like to have a copy of
that act and consult it. (A copy of the act is handed to Lenin.)
Here is Clause 46: “No worker or office employee in a state
farm shall have the right to keep his own livestock, poultry,
or vegetable plot.” Thus, it turns out that not all of you were
aware of the existence of this act. One of the comrades in
the Presidium told me that there was a heated debate on
this question at this Congress. I do not quite understand
why. I have just been handed a copy of Izvestia containing
this act entitled “Statute on Socialist Land Settlement
and the Measures for the Transition to Socialist Farming”.
Why was this clause inserted in the act? To introduce
labour in common on a common farm. If private vegetable
plots, animals, poultry, and so forth, were permitted
again, we should revert to the small farming that had existed
44
V. I. L E N I N
hitherto. If that were the case, would it be worth while
to have all this bother. Would it be worth while establishing
state farms? It goes without saying that if you discuss this
question and, knowing as you do the conditions prevailing
in Petrograd Gubernia—I am told that this Congress consists solely of representatives of Petrograd Gubernia—if on
the basis of your experience of what has been done in Petrograd Gubernia, and in spite of all the arguments in favour of
common production, you arrive at the conclusion that a
temporary exception should be made for this gubernia, we
shall re-examine the question. Only, you must try to prove
to us that such an exception is really necessary, that special
conditions, absent in other gubernias, prevail in Petrograd
Gubernia, otherwise, all the others will demand the same
exception. Then you must explain that you regard the measure
you recommend to the government, or on which you insist,
as a temporary one, for there can hardly be any dispute about
the fact that a state farm deserving the name must be run on
the basis of common labour. We have had the old system of
labour whereby each peasant toiled on his own strip of land,
had his own farm-house, his own cattle, poultry, harrow,
wooden plough, and so forth, for many years, for many centuries. We know perfectly well that in Russia and in other
countries this resulted in the peasants remaining ignorant
and poverty-stricken with the rich oppressing the poor,
for the problems that have to be faced in agriculture cannot
be solved on individual lines. If we attempt it, it will only
result in a reversion to the former poverty, from which only
one in a hundred, or perhaps, five out of a hundred, climb
into the ranks of the more well-to-do, while the rest live in
want. That is why our task is now to go over to the collective
tillage of the land, to large-scale farming in common. But
the Soviet government must not under any circumstances
resort to coercion. There is no law which makes this compulsory. Agricultural communes are established on a voluntary
basis; the adoption of collective tillage must be voluntary;
the workers and peasants’ government must refrain from
exercising the slightest compulsion, and the law prohibits
this. If anyone of you here knows of cases of compulsion, then
please regard it as an abuse of power, an infringement of the
law, which we shall do our utmost to rectify, which we shall
FIRST CONGRESS OF FARM LABOURERS
45
rectify. Organised farm labourers must help us; only with
the aid of their organisation shall we be able to prevent
such abuses. The state farms, however, are something different. They were never in the hands of individual small
farmers. The Soviet government takes them over and says
that we shall send the available agronomists to them and
transfer to them all the farm implements that have remained
intact. If we succeed in bringing the war to a close and conclude peace with America, we shall order a shipload of up-todate implements and supply the state farms with them so
that these large-scale farms may by common labour produce
better than before, at lower cost than before, and more than
before. It will be the function of the state farms gradually
to teach the rural population to work out for themselves the
new system, the system of common labour, which will prevent the resurgence of a handful of rich men to exploit the
masses of the poor as was always the case in the rural districts, not only in this country but also in the most free of
republics. You know perfectly well that there are still large
numbers of peasant profiteers in the rural districts who piled
up hundreds of thousands of rubles during the war, who are
hoarding Kerensky notes in anticipation of being able to invest them again and so exploit the poor peasants. What measures can be taken to combat this? None, except the adoption
of collective farming. Agricultural communes must be formed
on an entirely voluntary basis; there must be no coercion
whatever. The same applies to collective tillage of the land.
State farms are established on nationalised land. You know
that on the demand of the vast majority of the peasants the
private ownership of land was entirely abolished on October
26, 1917, on the first night after our Soviet revolution. These
large-scale farms established on nationalised land are called
state farms. Can we allow the old system of small farming
to revive on state farms? I think you will all agree that
we cannot, and must not do so. If the economic conditions
prevailing in Petrograd Gubernia, the conditions of practical
work with which you are closely familiar, and which we, of
course, could not take into account as we were not aware of
them—if, after thoroughly discussing the matter from all
angles you arrive at the conclusion that these conditions make
an exception necessary in the case of Petrograd Gubernia,
FROM MARX
TO MAO
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
46
V. I. L E N I N
that for a time it should be exempted, then, in order that we
may revise our decision you must try to submit the most
definite proof possible that this is necessary, and if you do I
promise that we shall discuss this matter again in the Council of People’s Commissars, in the light of the decision of
your Congress, and examine it again in the Central Executive
Committee. We shall discuss whether Petrograd Gubernia
should be exempted for a time, and under certain conditions,
from the operation of Clause 46, which prohibits the possession of vegetable plots, small livestock, poultry, and so
forth by state farm employees. Although we agree that it is
necessary to adopt farming in common, and although all
the work will be conducted on these lines, nevertheless, on
the recommendation of people who are familiar with the
practical side of the work; we shall make an exception—we
shall not refuse to do so, for sometimes it is necessary to make
exceptions. We trust that by working on these lines good
progress will be made, and that we shall succeed in laying
the foundations of real socialist agriculture. (Applause.)
First published in 1 9 2 6
Published according to
the verbatim report
47
SPEECH DELIVERED AT A MEETING
IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE, PETROGRAD
MARCH 13, 1919
NEWSPAPER REPORT
“The question that mainly interests most of you is the
food situation, and what the Council of People’s Commissars
has done in the matter. Permit me to tell you briefly what
it has done. We have entered into a severe, hungry halfyear, and all our enemies at home and abroad, including the
Right and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, knowing what hardships the people are suffering, are
trying to make capital out of it, are trying to overthrow the
Soviet government and thus, whether they realise it or not,
restore the rule of the landowners and capitalists. We have
entered a period when the collection of grain at its source
is exceeding deliveries, and the establishment of Soviet
power in the Ukraine gives us grounds for hoping that we
shall be able to cope with the food situation in the coming
half-year better than we did last year, although we shall
now have to pull through a half-year that will be more
severe than the preceding one. The fact that a considerable
section of the peasant masses has turned in favour of Soviet
power is a great gain for us. In those regions where the
Czechoslovaks 12 were, the Trans-Volga region and Ufa
Gubernia, the attitude of even the well-to-do peasants has
changed abruptly in favour of Soviet power, for the Czechoslovaks taught them a severe lesson. Only a few days ago
a delegation of peasants representing five volosts in the
Sarapul Uyezd came to see me. These are the volosts which
quite recently sent 40,000 poods of grain each to Moscow
and Petrograd. I asked the delegation to tell me what the
48
V. I. L E N I N
attitude of the peasants was towards the Soviet government,
and I received the following reply. ‘Yes, the Czechoslovaks
taught us a lesson, and now, nobody will turn us away from
the Soviet government.’ In other regions, too, in the cisUrals, for example, where, incidentally, there are huge
stocks of grain, the peasants are now on the side of the
Soviets. At one time, influenced by the Mensheviks and
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries—you will remember the Left
Socialist-Revolutionary Muravyov nearly succeeded in
opening our front to the Czechoslovaks—the peasants in
these regions were hostile to the Soviets. But the atrocities
perpetrated by the officers of the Czechoslovak army, their
brutal treatment of the population, their attempts to restore
the old tsarist and landowner system in its entirety—all
this taught the peasants a lesson. At the present time Soviet
activities are being carried on in those gubernias with a
zest that you here can scarcely imagine, for here, in the
large centres, the people are exhausted by lengthy undernourishment, whereas in those regions, where there are
fairly large stocks of grain, problems of filling the stomach
recede into the background.
“I now come to the details. In Ufa Gubernia there are
stocks of grain amounting to 60,000,000 poods, procurement
is proceeding rapidly, but we are encountering colossal
transport difficulties. On the railways, on the KazanSarapul and Volga-Bugulma lines, we have about 10,000,000
poods of grain already collected, but we cannot transport
it owing to the shortage of locomotives, trucks and fuel
and the exceedingly bad state of the available locomotives. To increase the carrying capacity of our railways we
have been obliged to resort to an extremely radical measure:
we have decided to suspend all passenger traffic on the railways all over Russia for a period extending from March
18 to April 10. Before deciding on this measure we discussed
it three times with our railwaymen comrades and with
prominent railway experts. Only after we had discussed
the matter from every angle and had weighed up all probable
consequences did we make the decision. Our calculations
showed that the suspension of passenger traffic will release
220 locomotives; although they are of low power they are
capable of transporting 3,500,000 poods of grain. If we cal-
SPEECH AT A MEETING IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE
49
culate the amount of grain the private profiteers carry—
there were weeks when we were obliged to allow them to
transport food unhindered—we shall find that in a period
of three weeks these profiteers might bring in no more
than 200,000 poods. That decided the issue. The kulaks,
profiteers, and even individual workers, will, of course,
raise a howl about this and say that we are depriving the
people of the only opportunity they have of bringing in
even a pood or so of grain. We know that the SocialistRevolutionaries and Mensheviks will appear on the scene
and try to take advantage of the famine to turn the people
against the Soviet government. But here, as in all other
cases of difficulty, we rely exclusively on the class-consciousness of the masses of the advanced workers. Better
suffer privation, better encounter the hostile agitation of
the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, but face up
to the danger and say frankly, ‘We shall not extricate
ourselves from our food difficulties unless we adopt the most
radical measures and strain every nerve to transport the
grain.’ In many places grain intended for delivery has been
piled near the railway stations on the bare ground and is
in danger of being swept away by the spring floods. Measures must be taken to accelerate loading and transport.
In deciding on this radical measure we took into account
all the contingent circumstances. We know that before
Easter there is a heavy increase in the number of workingmen passengers on the railways and that is why we decided
to restore passenger traffic by that time. We know, too,
that the suburban services are absolutely essential for the
workers, and we therefore decided not to suspend them. We
have sent our most energetic and experienced comrades to
various localities. To Ufa Gubernia we have sent Comrade
Bryukhanov, Deputy Commissar for Food, who is closely
familiar with conditions in that gubernia. He will be assisted by comrades from the War Department, for the front
is not far away. We have also sent comrades from the War
Department to the other railway line, Kazan-Sarapul.
They have been instructed to mobilise the local peasants
and to strain every nerve to get the grain moved, at least
as far as Kazan. In this way we shall save it and ensure its
delivery to the metropolitan cities and the non-agricultural
50
V. I. L E N I N
districts. On this we base our hope of defeating the famine.
The attempt of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries
to make capital out of the people’s misfortunes will be
thwarted once again.
“Unlike the situation last year, when the Czechoslovaks
were attacking us and had deprived us of our most fertile
regions, we now have two new sources of grain supply, on
which our food supply authorities could not count last
autumn when they drew up their food supply plans for the
whole year. These sources are the Ukraine and the Don
region. Last autumn the Germans were still in occupation of
the Ukraine. The German imperialists counted on shipping
60,000,000 poods of grain from the Ukraine to Germany,
and with this flood of foodstuff hoped to destroy the germs of
Bolshevism among the masses of the German people. But
something entirely different happened. Instead of 60,000,000
poods the Germans shipped only 9,000,000 poods from the
Ukraine. But they shipped the seeds of Bolshevism with
this grain and they are growing splendidly in Germany. In
Germany today, Bolshevism is fighting the social-traitors
in the streets of Berlin, where workers’ blood is flowing,
shed by the social-traitors. We are convinced that the German social-traitors will be vanquished just as Kerensky
was vanquished in this country. (Applause.)
“But in addition to the Ukraine we have the Don region.
Krasnov’s Cossacks have been able to hold out all this time
with the aid of foreign gold, first German and later AngloFrench. But this does not help—our victory over the Cossacks is certain. At the present time we are holding the Tsaritsyn-Likhaya line, the link between grain and coal supplies. Thus, we have two sources of supply—the Ukraine and
the Don region. The Ukraine is a fraternal Soviet republic,
with which we are on the best of terms. This republic is
settling the question of assisting us not as a huckster, not
as a profiteer; the Ukraine is guided exclusively by an ardent
desire to assist the hungry North. The first socialist duty of
every citizen of the Ukraine is to come to the aid of the
North. But in the Ukraine, too, we are encountering tremendous difficulties. The Council of People’s Commissars has
repeatedly invited Comrade Rakovsky to meet us to discuss
the matter, and has sent military men to the Ukraine. But it
SPEECH AT A MEETING IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE
51
appears that as regards organisation, matters are in a worse
state in the Ukraine than they were here after the October
Revolution. Kerensky left us something of a food supply
organisation. The food supply officials sabotaged us, of
course, and came to the Smolny not to co-operate but to
bargain with us. But we broke the resistance of these groups
and in the end compelled them to work. In the Ukraine they
have no food supply organisation whatever. The Germans,
when they were there, only engaged in plunder; they
plundered as long as they had the power to do so, and, of
course, they left no food supply organisation. The Ukraine
has no officials experienced in handling food supplies, or
large working-class centres from which capable men could be
drawn. The Donets Basin has been devastated to a degree
that one cannot even imagine. To this day gangs of Cossacks
are roaming in the remoter parts of the region robbing the
local population. From all parts of the Ukraine we hear the
cry ‘Send us workers!’ We have set up a food supply bureau
there consisting of representatives of the trade union movement. We are transferring there the more experienced food
supply officials from Voronezh and Tambov gubernias, and
we are enlisting the more capable urban proletarians for the
food supply organisations. Nevertheless no grain has been
procured in the Ukraine, there are no purchasing organisations, the peasants have no confidence in our currency, and
we have no goods with which to barter. Notwithstanding all
these unfavourable circumstances, we have given the Ukrainian comrades the assignment to ship to Russia 50,000,000
poods of grain by June 1, 1919. I do not think this will be
carried out in full, but it will be good if only a half, or twothirds is delivered!”
Lenin then went on to say that the victories we have gained
in the Don region were due entirely to the intensification
of Party activities and to cultural and educational work
in the ranks of the Red Army.
“This brought about a psychological change, and as a
result our Red Army won the Don region for us.” (Stormy
applause.)
“Generally speaking, our Red Army is growing stronger
day after day. Even the bourgeois military experts admit
that in the imperialist countries the armies are disintegrat-
52
V. I. L E N I N
ing, whereas our army is becoming sounder, is maturing and
growing stronger. In the Don region, too, there are large
stocks of grain, and there is no food supply organisation
there; but we have there our disciplined army, and this is
already an organisation by means of which we shall obtain
grain with the minimum of expenditure and the maximum
results.
“I must say that the Czechoslovaks and the Cossacks
are continuing their tactics of destroying all they can.
They blew up the railway bridge across the Volga and then
destroyed all other railway bridges and put all the TransVolga main lines out of commission. The Council of
People’s Commissars for a long, time discussed ways and
means of restoring at least two lines: Liski-Rostov and
Likhaya-Tsaritsyn. Radical measures have been adopted,
and at the last meeting of the Council of Defence held on
Monday, March 10, it was reported that all the necessary
tools and materials had already been delivered to these lines
and that they would be restored before the spring thaw
makes the roads impassable.”
Referring once again to the assistance which the Don
region and the Ukraine will render us in the way of food
supplies, Lenin exclaimed: “This half-year is the last severe
half-year!” (Applause.)
“The international situation, though still acute, is nevertheless improving. All of you saw and heard the foreign delegates to the Third International 13 who in their speeches and
reports emphasised that the road we have taken is the right
one. Bolshevism has become an international force. This is
evident from the fact that the most advanced bourgeois
democracies, which boast so much of their liberties, are taking
stern measures against the Bolsheviks. The United States of
America, one of the richest bourgeois republics in the world,
with its hundred million population, is hastening to deport
several hundred Russian Bolsheviks, most of whom do not
even speak English. Whence this horror of Bolshevism? As the
newspapers report, at workers’ meetings in Paris, even those
workers who do not sympathise with the Bolsheviks refuse to
give a hearing to speakers who are hostile to Bolshevism.
(Applause.) Notwithstanding the flood of lies and calumny
which the bourgeois press of Western Europe daily turns
SPEECH AT A MEETING IN THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE
53
against the Bolsheviks, the people have learned the truth
and are siding with the Bolsheviks. Let the French bourgeois
press say that the Bolsheviks are inhuman monsters who
gobble up little children—the French workers do not trust
that press.
“We have succeeded in making the word ‘Soviet’ intelligible in all languages. The masses have realised that their
salvation lies in a workers’ and peasants’ government, in
Soviets. That is why it was so easy for us to reach agreement
at the Congress of the Third International in Moscow. In
the most remote corners, in some Italian Poshekhonye, 14
farm labourers and workers gather together and declare, ‘We
greet the German Spartacists and the Russian “Sovietists” and
demand that their programme shall become the programme
of the workers of the world.’ I shall repeat here what I
have already said in Moscow. 15 This shows that victory will
be ours, and there can be no doubt about this whatever. We
have won the sympathies of the workers in spite of the lies
uttered by the bourgeois press. Meanwhile, the imperialists
at the peace conference cannot reach an agreement and are
ready to fly at each other’s throats. The Bolshevik contagion
has already spread to all the countries of Europe and America. Deporting Bolsheviks will be of no avail. Even if Western Europe were to isolate itself from us by means of a Chinese
Wall, even if all the Russian Bolsheviks disappeared into
the underworld, it would not relieve the position of the Western imperialists. The masses of the people have realised that
they cannot improve their conditions with the aid of parliament. A workers’ government, Soviets, are needed. Huge debts
accrue from the war, and the imperialists have lost their
senses to such an extent that they are demanding that the
nations should pay their war debts. They say to the nations,
‘Pay us millions and millions for having been kind enough to
permit the slaughter of 10,000,000 men to settle the question
of our profits!’ In all countries imperialism is slipping into
the abyss into which German imperialism has fallen.”
(Stormy applause.)
Severnaya Kommuna No. 5 8 ,
March 1 4 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Severnaya Kommuna text
THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
OF THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT
Published in pamphlet form
by the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’
and Red Army Deputies,
March-April 1 9 1 9
Afterword first published in 1 9 2 2
Published according to
the pamphlet,
afterword according to
the manuscript
SEITLUCIFFID DNA STNEMEVEIHCA EHT
TNEMNREVOG TEIVOS EHT FO
ot gnidrocca dehsilbuP
,telhpmap eht
ot gnidrocca drowretfa
tpircsunam eht
mrof telhpmap ni dehsilbuP
’srekroW fo teivoS dargorteP eht yb
,seitupeD ymrA deR dna
9 1 9 1 lirpA-hcraM
2 2 9 1 ni dehsilbup tsrif drowretfA
57
It is now the right time, when we have succeeded in restoring the revolutionary International, the Communist International, when the Soviet form of the movement has itself
become both the theoretical and practical programme of the
entire Third International—now that this has been done it is
appropriate to review the general course of development of
the Soviets. What are the Soviets? What is the significance of
this form which was created by the masses, and was not
invented by any individual?
It seems to me that the tasks now confronting us, the proletariat that has won power, can be appraised only from
this angle, as can also the degree to which we have attempted
to fulfil these tasks and the degree to which we have succeeded
during the past year under the dictatorship of the proletariat
in Russia.
Only in the light of the general role of the Soviets, of
their general significance, of the place they occupy in world
history, is it possible to understand the situation we found
ourselves in, why we had to act in the way we did and
in no other, and how, looking back, we must examine the
correctness or incorrectness of the steps we took.
And we are now doubly in need of such a more general,
broader, and more far-reaching outlook, because it is sometimes painful for Party people in Russia to see faults and defects and feel dissatisfied with their work, because the practical fulfilment of the urgent, current, immediate, everyday
administrative duties that have been, and continue to be, the
lot of the Soviet authorities often distracts attention, compels
us, in spite of ourselves—it is no use rebelling against the
conditions under which we have to work—to devote too much
attention to the petty details of administration. They cause
us to forget the general course of the world-wide development
58
V. I. L E N I N
of the proletarian dictatorship, its evolution through Soviet
power or, more correctly, the Soviet movement, through the
groping of the proletarian masses within the Soviets—something we all experienced and have forgotten—and through the
attempt to achieve the dictatorship within the Soviets.
These are the difficulties we have encountered and the
general tasks to which, in my opinion, we must turn our
attention so that we may as far as possible get away from
the petty details of administration in which everybody who
is engaged in practical local government work is absorbed,
and so that we may understand what a long way we, as a
contingent of the world proletarian army, have still to go.
Complete and final victory on a world scale cannot be
achieved in Russia alone; it can be achieved only when the
proletariat is victorious in at least all the advanced countries, or, at all events, in some of the largest of the advanced
countries. Only then shall we be able to say with absolute
confidence that the cause of the proletariat has triumphed,
that our first objective—the overthrow of capitalism—has
been achieved.
We have achieved this objective in one country, and this
confronts us with a second task. Since Soviet power has been
established, since the bourgeoisie has been overthrown in one
country, the second task is to wage the struggle on a world
scale, on a different plane, the struggle of the proletarian
state surrounded by capitalist states.
This situation is an entirely novel and difficult one.
On the other hand, since the rule of the bourgeoisie has
been overthrown, the main task is to organise the development of the country.
The yellow socialists who have gathered in Berne and now
intend to honour us with a visit by distinguished foreigners,
are extremely fond of repeating that “the Bolsheviks believe
in the almighty power of violence”. This phrase only shows
that those who use it are people, who in the heat of the revolutionary struggle, when they are being completely crushed
by the violence of the bourgeoisie—look at what is going on
in Germany—are incapable of teaching their own proletariat
the tactics of necessary violence.
Under certain circumstances violence is both necessary
and useful, but there are circumstances under which violence
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
59
cannot produce results. There have been cases, however, of
not everyone appreciating this difference, so that it must
be discussed. In October violence—the overthrow of the
bourgeoisie by Soviet power, the removal of the old government, revolutionary violence—resulted in a brilliant success.
Why? First, because the masses were organised in Soviets,
and secondly, because in the long political period, from February to October, the position of the enemy—the bourgeoisie—was undermined, sapped, washed away, like a block of
ice by the spring thaw, and internally had been deprived of
his strength; and the movement in October, compared, say,
with the present revolutionary movement in Germany,
brought us such a complete and brilliant victory for revolutionary violence.
May we assume that such a path, such a form of struggle,
such an easy victory for revolutionary violence, is possible
if these conditions do not exist?
It would be a very great mistake to assume that. And the
greater the revolutionary victories achieved under certain
specific conditions the more often does the danger arise of
our allowing ourselves to be flattered by such victories and
not stopping to think coolly, calmly and attentively, about
the conditions that made them possible.
When we tore the Kerensky government and Milyukov’s
coalition ministry to shreds, so to speak, compelled them to
shuffle portfolios over and over again, compelled them to
play ministerial leapfrog from right to left, from left to
right, up and down and down and up, it became obvious
that they could not pull together, no matter in what order
they sat, and then they were blown away like so much
chaff.
Is the situation that now confronts our practical tasks
in respect of world imperialism anything like that? Of course
not.
That is why the Treaty of Brest created serious difficulties
in the sphere of foreign policy, but the mass character of the
movement helped us to overcome them.
But what is the source of the mistakes that caused some of
our comrades to think that we were committing a heinous
crime? There is still an odd crank or two among people able
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V. I. L E N I N
to wield the pen who imagine that they are somebodies, that
they have experience, can teach others, and so forth, who
even now assert that this was a compromise with German
imperialism.
Yes, we made the same compromise when we “compromised” with the tsar by entering the disgusting, reactionary
Duma and undermining it from within.
Can we count on the overthrow of world imperialism
merely by force before the proletariat in those imperialist
countries has reached the necessary stage of development?
If the question is presented in this way—and we as Marxists have always taught that this is the only way to present
the question—we must agree that it would be very absurd
and foolish to employ the policy of violence under those
circumstances, and complete failure to understand the conditions under which a policy of violence can be successful.
Now we realise this; we have gained experience.
While we, at the time of the Treaty of Brest, were obliged
to muster our forces and amidst the most extraordinary difficulties lay the foundations of a new army, the Red Army,
in a country ruined and exhausted by war to a greater degree
than any other country in the world, while we, in the
first half and the beginning of the second half of 1918, were,
stone by stone, laying the foundations of a genuine socialist
Red Army, the imperialism of other countries was being
sapped by internal disintegration and the growing discontent,
and was becoming enfeebled.
And revolutionary violence triumphed in Germany after
many months of development of the struggle had sapped the
strength of imperialism in that country; and the same thing
is now being repeated to some extent—to some extent, but
not entirely—in the Entente countries.
An American who had watched events in the West-European countries very closely, at first hand, and without prejudice, said to me recently, “France is undoubtedly on the
eve of a great disappointment, the collapse of illusions. The
French people are being fed with promises—you are the victors, they are told.” The bourgeoisie is taking advantage of
the old patriotic sentiments of the entire French nation,
of their anger at the way they were crushed in 1870, and of
their fury at the way the country has been depopulated, bled
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
61
white and exhausted by four years of war—the bourgeoisie
is taking advantage of all this to divert these sentiments into
chauvinist channels: “We have beaten the Germans; our
pockets will now be filled, and we shall be able to relax.”
But the dispassionate American, looking at things like a
businessman, says, “The Germans will not pay, for they have
nothing to pay with.”
That is why the French nation is being fed with promises
and fairy-tales about the peace, the final victory, that is
coming soon. But peace means the collapse of all hopes of
being able to crawl out of this bloody mire at least partly
alive—with broken arms and legs, but alive. It will be impossible to crawl out of this peace while the old capitalist system is intact, because the war has piled up such a heap of
debts, such a mass of ruins throughout the capitalist world,
that it is impossible to crawl out of it without upsetting the
whole pile and starting an avalanche.
Even those who are not revolutionaries, who have no faith
in revolution, and dread it, are nevertheless discussing it
theoretically and will be convinced by the course of events,
by the consequences of the imperialist war, that there is no
way out except revolution.
I repeat, I was particularly astonished by the American’s
appraisal of the situation from the point of view of a business
man who, of course, has not studied the theory of the class
struggle and sincerely thinks it is nonsense, but who is
interested in millions and thousands of millions, and being
able to count, asks: “Will they pay or not?” And he answers,
again from the shrewd businessman’s point of view: “They
have nothing to pay with! You will not even get 20 kopeks in
the ruble!”
It is in such a situation in all the Entente countries that we
see profound and widespread unrest stimulated by the
workers’ sympathy for the Soviet form.
A Paris crowd, for example, is perhaps more sensitive
than any assembly of people in any other country, because
the people there have had a very good schooling, they have
made a number of revolutions—and there, this most responsive crowd, which will not allow a speaker to strike a false
note, now interrupts those who dare to say anything against
the Bolsheviks. And yet, only a few months ago, nobody
62
V. I. L E N I N
could even as much as hint that he is in favour of Bolshevism
without being jeered at by the very same crowd.
Meanwhile the Paris bourgeoisie has set its entire machine
of lies, slander and deception in motion against Bolshevism.
But now we know what this means, for in 1917 we Bolsheviks experienced the persecution of the entire bourgeois press.
The bourgeoisie in our country, however, miscalculated
slightly and overdid it in thinking that they could enmesh
the Bolsheviks in their net of slander; they overdid things
so badly, they went so far in their attacks that they gave us a
free advertisement and compelled even the most backward
workers to say to themselves: “Well, if the capitalists are
abusing the Bolsheviks so much, it shows that those Bolsheviks know how to fight the capitalists!”
That is why the policy which we were obliged to pursue
at the time of the Brest peace, a most brutal, violent and
humiliating peace, proved to be the only correct policy that
could have been pursued.
And I think that it will be useful to recall this policy once
again at the present time when a similar situation is arising
in the Entente countries, when there, too, the bourgeoisie is
filled with a mad desire to thrust their debts, poverty and
ruin on Russia, to plunder Russia and crush her in order to
divert the rising anger of the masses of their own working
people from themselves.
Looking at the situation dispassionately we must say to
ourselves very clearly, if we do not want to fool ourselves
and others—this is a dangerous thing for revolutionaries to
indulge in—we must say that as far as military strength is
concerned, the Entente is stronger than we are. But if we
look at things in the light of their development, we shall
also say very definitely and with a conviction based not only
on our revolutionary views but also on our experience, that
the strength of the Entente countries will not last, they are
on the threshold of a great and abrupt change in the temper
of their masses.
They have been feeding both French and British workers
with promises, saying, “We shall finish plundering the whole
world and you will have enough to eat.” This is what the
bourgeois press is shouting and dinning into the ears of the
ignorant masses.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
63
They will probably conclude peace in a few months—if
they do not quarrel among themselves in the meantime, and
there are a number of serious symptoms that this is possible.
But if they succeed in concluding peace without flying at
each other’s throats, this peace will be the beginning of an
immediate collapse, because these unprecedented debts
cannot be paid, and they can do nothing to alleviate the
desperate state of ruin, when in France the production of
wheat has dropped to less than half and famine is knocking
at the door everywhere, and the productive forces have been
destroyed; they are unable to do anything about it.
If we look at the situation soberly we shall have to admit
that the method of appraising affairs which proved so
correct in appraising the Russian revolution is, day after
day, indicating the coming of the world revolution.
We know that the streams that will carry with them the
icebergs of the Entente, of capitalism, of imperialism, are
gaining strength day after day.
On the one hand, the Entente countries are stronger than
we are; but on the other hand, they cannot possibly hold out
long owing to the internal situation.
It is this situation that determines the intricate tasks of
international policy—tasks which we may, and probably
will, have to tackle in the very near future, and which,
though I am insufficiently informed about them in all their
detail, I would like to talk to you-about most of all so
that a picture of the experience of the work done by the Council of People’s Commissars, work in the sphere of foreign
policy, will be presented to you, comrades, in a clear and
interesting form.
The most important of our experiences is the Brest peace.
This is the most significant result of the foreign policy of the
Council of People’s Commissars. We were obliged to play
for time, to retreat, manoeuvre and sign a most humiliating
peace treaty, and in this way gain an opportunity to lay the
foundation of a new socialist army. This foundation we have
laid, while our once mighty and all-powerful enemy is already
powerless.
All over the world things are moving in the same direction, and this is the chief and principal lesson that we must
learn and try to understand as clearly as possible in order to
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V. I. L E N I N
avoid making mistakes in the extremely intricate, extremely
difficult and extremely involved problems of foreign policy
which any day may confront the Council of People’s Commissars, the Central Executive Committee, and Soviet power
as a whole.
I shall conclude my remarks on foreign policy with this
and proceed to deal with some other extremely important
questions.
Comrades, as regards activities in the military field—a
year ago, in February and March 1918, we had no army at
all. We had, perhaps, ten million armed workers and peasants
who constituted the old army that had collapsed completely,
was fully ready and determined to desert, to flee, to abandon
everything, come what may.
At that time this was regarded as an exclusively Russian
phenomenon. People thought that owing to the Russians’
characteristic impatience, or lack of organisation, they would
not hold out, whereas the Germans would.
That is what we were told. And now we see that a few
months have passed and the same thing has happened to the
German army, which was immeasurably superior to ours in
culture, equipment, and discipline, in providing decent
conditions for the sick and wounded, as regards home leave,
and so forth. Even the most cultured and disciplined masses
could not stand the slaughter, the many years of slaughter,
and so a period of absolute disintegration set in when even
the advanced German army broke down.
Evidently, there is a limit not only for Russia but for all
countries. There are different limits for different countries,
but for all of them there is a limit beyond which it is impossible to continue to wage war for the sake of the interests of
the capitalists. This is what we see today.
German imperialism has completely exposed itself as a
predator. The most important thing is that even in America
and in France, in these notorious democracies (the traitors
to socialism, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries,
those hapless people who call themselves socialists, are fond
of chattering about democracies), in these most advanced
democracies of the world, in these republics, imperialism is becoming more arrogant every day and we find
there beasts of prey more predatory than anywhere else.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
65
They are plundering the world, fighting each other, and arming against each other. This cannot be concealed for long. It
could be concealed when the war fever was at its height.
But the fever is subsiding, peace is approaching, and it is
precisely in these democracies that the masses see, in spite
of all the lies they are being told, that the war has led to
fresh plunder, that the most democratic republic is nothing
more nor less than a disguise for the most brutal and cynical
predator who is ready to ruin hundreds of millions of people
in order to pay the debts, that is, to pay the imperialist
gentlemen, the capitalists, for being good enough to allow
the workers to cut each other’s throats. This is becoming
clearer to the masses every day.
It is this situation that makes possible political statements
such as the article written by the military correspondent of a
newspaper that belongs to the richest and most politically
experienced bourgeoisie, the London Times; the author appraises events by saying that all over the world the armies are
breaking up and there is only one country where the army is
being built up, and that country is Russia.
The bourgeoisie—which militarily is far stronger than
Soviet Bolshevism—is compelled to admit this fact. And
this fact serves as a criterion of what we have accomplished
in the course of our Soviet activities in the past year.
We succeeded in reaching a turning-point where instead
of an army of ten million, the bulk of which had deserted,
unable to stand the horrors of war, and which had realised
that this was a criminal war, we began to build, one hundred
thousand after another, a socialist army, which knows what
it is fighting for and is ready to make greater sacrifices and
suffer more privation than under tsarism. For this army
knows that it is fighting for its own cause, for its own land,
for its own power in the factories, that it is defending the
power of the working people, and that the working people
of other countries are awakening, slowly and with great difficulty, but awakening nevertheless.
This is the situation that characterises the year’s experience
of Soviet power.
War is an incredible hardship for Soviet Russia, war
is an incredible hardship for a people who for four years
have borne the horrors of the imperialist war. For Soviet
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V. I. L E N I N
Russia war is an incredibly heavy burden. But at the present time even our powerful enemies admit that their armies
are cracking up, whereas our army is being built. For the
first time in history an army is being built on the basis of
the closest contact, inseverable contact, coalescence, one
might say, of the army and the Soviets. The Soviets unite all
the working people, all the exploited, and the army is being
built up for the purpose of socialist defence and on the basis
of class-consciousness.
An eighteenth-century Prussian monarch once wisely
remarked: “If our soldiers knew what we were fighting for,
it would be impossible to wage a single war.” That old Prussian monarch was no fool. We, however, are prepared to say,
comparing our position with that of the monarch, that we
can wage war because the masses know what they are fighting for; and they want to fight notwithstanding the incredible burdens—burdens, I repeat, far greater than under
tsarism—knowing that they are making these desperate
and incredibly heavy sacrifices in defence of their socialist
cause, fighting side by side with those workers of other
countries who are “disintegrating” and are beginning to
understand our position.
Some foolish people are shouting about red militarism.
These are political crooks who pretend that they believe
this absurdity and throw charges of this kind right and
left, exercising their lawyers’ skill in concocting plausible
arguments and in throwing dust in the eyes of the masses.
And the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries shout:
“Look, instead of socialism, they are giving you red militarism!”
What a “horrible” crime, indeed! The imperialists of the
whole world hurled themselves upon the Russian Republic
in order to crush it, and we began to form an army which
for the first time in history knows what it is fighting for
and what it is making sacrifices for, which is successfully
contending against a numerically superior enemy, and which
with every month of its resistance on an unprecedented scale
is bringing nearer the world revolution, and this is denounced
as red militarism!
I repeat, these are either fools to whom no political
appraisal can apply, or else political crooks.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
67
Everybody knows that this war was forced upon us. We
brought the old war to a close at the beginning of 1918,
and did not start a new war. Everybody knows that the whiteguards attacked us in the West, South and East, only because
they were assisted by the Entente, which scattered millions
right and left. And these advanced countries collected and
handed over to the whiteguards the vast stocks of war supplies and ammunition left over from the imperialist war, for
those gentlemen, the millionaires and multimillionaires,
know that their fate is being decided here, that it is here they
will perish if they do not crush us at once.
The socialist, republic is straining every nerve, is making
sacrifices and winning victories. And if after a year of civil
war you look at the map and compare what Soviet Russia
was in March 1918 and in July 1918—when the German imperialists in the West occupied the line laid down by the Treaty
of Brest, when the Ukraine was under the heel of the German
imperialists, when the Czechoslovaks, bribed by the French
and British, lorded it in the East as far as Kazan and
Simbirsk—if you look at the map today, you will see that
we have expanded immensely, that we have won enormous
victories.
In this situation, only sordid and despicable political
crooks can use strong language and accuse us of red militarism.
Never in history has there been a revolution in which it
was possible to lay down one’s arms and rest on one’s laurels
after the victory. Whoever thinks that such revolutions are
possible is not only no revolutionary, but the worst enemy of
the working class. There has never been a revolution, even a
second-rate one, even a bourgeois revolution in which the
only issue was the transfer of power from one propertied
minority to another. We know of examples! The French
revolution, against which the old powers hurled themselves
at the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to crush
it, we call great precisely because it succeeded in rousing the
vast masses of the people in defence of its gains and they
resisted the whole world; this was one of its greatest merits.
Revolutions are subjected to the most serious tests in
the fire of battle. If you are oppressed and exploited and think
of throwing off the power of the exploiters, if you are deter-
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V. I. L E N I N
mined to carry this to its logical conclusion, you must understand that you will have to contend against the onslaught
of the exploiters of the whole world. If you are ready to offer resistance and to make further sacrifices in order to hold
out in the struggle, you are a revolutionary; if not, you will
be crushed.
This is how the question is presented by the history of all
revolutions.
The real test to which our revolution is being subjected
is that we, in a backward country, succeeded in capturing
power before the others, succeeded in establishing the Soviet
form of government, the power of the working and exploited
people. Shall we be able to hold, on at least until the masses
in the other countries make a move? If we are not prepared to
make fresh sacrifices and do not hold out, it will be said that
our revolution was historically unjustified. But democrats in
civilised countries who are armed to the teeth dread the presence of a hundred or so Bolsheviks in a free republic with a
hundred million population, in the way America does.
Bolshevism is so infectious! And it turns out that the democrats cannot cope with a hundred immigrants from starving,
ruined Russia who might talk about Bolshevism! The masses
sympathise with us! The bourgeoisie have only one path of
salvation, and that is, while their hand still grasps the sword,
while they still control the guns, to turn these guns against
Soviet Russia and to crush her in a few months, because later
on nothing will crush her. This is the situation we are in;
this is what determined the military policy of the Council of
People’s Commissars during the past year; and this is why,
pointing to the facts, to the results, we have a right to say
that we have stood the test only because the workers and peasants, though utterly exhausted by war, are creating a new
army under still more arduous conditions and are displaying
new heroism.
That is a brief summary of the policy of the Soviet government in the military field. Permit me to say just a few more
words about a matter in which military policy overlaps policy in another field—economic policy. I refer to the military
experts.
You are probably aware of the controversy that has arisen
over this question, and that some comrades, most devoted and
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
69
convinced Bolshevik Communists, often expressed vehement
protests against the fact that for the purpose of organising
our socialist Red Army we are utilising the services of the
old military experts, tsarist generals and officers, whose
records are blemished by their service to the tsar, and in some
cases by the bloody acts of repression against workers and
peasants.
The contradiction here is glaring, and indignation, one
might say, springs up of its own accord. How can we build a
socialist army with the aid of tsarist experts?!
It turned out that this was the way, the only way, we did
build up an army. If we give some thought to the task that has
fallen to our lot, it will not be difficult to understand that
it is the only way we could build it. This is not only a military matter, it is a task that confronts us in all spheres of
everyday life, and of the country’s economy.
The old utopian socialists imagined that socialism could be
built by men of a new type, that first they would train good,
pure and splendidly educated people, and these would build
socialism. We always laughed at this and said that this was
playing with puppets, that it was socialism as an amusement
for young ladies, but not serious politics.
We want to build socialism with the aid of those men and
women who grew up under capitalism, were depraved and
corrupted by capitalism, but steeled for the struggle by
capitalism. There are proletarians who have been so hardened
that they can stand a thousand times more hardship than
any army. There are tens of millions of oppressed peasants,
ignorant and scattered, but capable of uniting around the
proletariat in the struggle, if the proletariat adopts skilful
tactics. And there are scientific and technical experts all
thoroughly imbued with the bourgeois world outlook, there
are military experts who were trained under bourgeois conditions—if they were only bourgeois it would not be so bad,
but there were also conditions of landed proprietorship, serfdom and the big stick. As far as concerns the economy, all
the agronomists, engineers and school-teachers were recruited from the propertied class; they did not drop from the skies.
Neither under the reign of Tsar Nicholas nor under the Republican President Wilson were the propertyless proletarians at the bench and the peasants at the plough able to get a
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V. I. L E N I N
university education. Science and technology exist only for
the rich, for the propertied class; capitalism provides culture
only for the minority. We must build socialism out of
this culture, we have no other material. We want to start
building socialism at once out of the material that capitalism
left us yesterday to be used today, at this very moment, and
not with people reared in hothouses, assuming that we were to
take this fairy-tale seriously. We have bourgeois experts and
nothing else. We have no other bricks with which to build.
Socialism must triumph, and we socialists and Communists
must prove by deeds that we are capable of building socialism
with these bricks, with this material, that we are capable of
building socialist society with the aid of proletarians who
have enjoyed the fruits of culture only to an insignificant
degree, and with the aid of bourgeois specialists.
If you do not build communist society with this material,
you will prove that you are mere phrase-mongers and windbags.
This is how the question is presented by the historical
legacy of world capitalism! This is the difficulty that confronted us concretely when we took power, when we set
up the Soviet machinery of state!
This is only half the task, but it is the greater half. Soviet
machinery of state means that the working people are
united in such a way as to crush capitalism by the weight of
their mass unity. The masses did this. But it is not enough
to crush capitalism. We must take the entire culture that
capitalism left behind and build socialism with it. We must
take all its science, technology, knowledge and art. Without
these we shall be unable to build communist society. But
this science, technology and art are in the hands and in the
heads of the experts.
This is the task that confronts us in all spheres. It is a
task with inherent contradictions, like the inherent contradictions of capitalism as a whole. It is a most difficult task,
but a practicable one. We cannot wait twenty years until we
have trained pure, communist experts, until we have trained
the first generation of Communists without blemish and without reproach. No, excuse me, but we must build now, in
two months and not in twenty years’ time, so as to be able to
fight the bourgeoisie, to oppose the bourgeois science and
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
71
technology of the whole world. Here we must achieve victory.
It is difficult to make the bourgeois experts serve us by the
weight of our masses, but it is possible, and if we do it, we
shall triumph.
When Comrade Trotsky informed me recently that the
number of officers of the old army employed by our War
Department runs into several tens of thousands, I perceived
concretely where the secret of using our enemy lay, how to
compel those who had opposed communism to build it, how
to build communism with the bricks which the capitalists
had chosen to hurl against us! We have no other bricks! And
so, we must compel the bourgeois experts, under the leadership of the proletariat, to build up our edifice with these
bricks. This is what is difficult; but this is the pledge of
victory.
Naturally, on this path, which is a new and difficult one,
we have made more than a few mistakes; on this path we
have met with more than a few reverses. Everybody knows
that a certain number of experts have systematically betrayed
us. Among the experts in the factories, among the agronomists, and in the administration, we have seen and see today
at every step a malicious attitude to work, malicious sabotage.
We know that all this presents tremendous difficulties and
that we cannot achieve victory by violence alone. . . . We,
of course, are not opposed to violence. We laugh at those who
are opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat, we laugh
and say that they are fools who do not understand that there
must be either the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Those who think otherwise are
either idiots, or are so politically ignorant that it would be a
disgrace to allow them to come anywhere near a meeting, let
alone on the platform. The only alternative is either violence
against Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the murder of the best
leaders of the workers, or the violent suppression of the exploiters; and whoever dreams of a middle course is our most
harmful and dangerous enemy. That is how the matter stands
at present. Hence, when we talk of utilising the services of the
experts we must bear in mind the lesson taught by Soviet
policy during the past year. During that year we have broken
and defeated the exploiters and we must now solve the prob-
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V. I. L E N I N
lem of using the bourgeois specialists. Here, I repeat, violence
alone will get us nowhere. Here, in addition to violence,
after successful violence, we need the organisation, discipline
and moral weight of the victorious proletariat, which will
subordinate all the bourgeois experts to its will and draw
them into its work.
Some people may say that Lenin is recommending moral
persuasion instead of violence! But it is foolish to imagine
that we can solve the problem of organising a new science and
technology for the development of communist society by violence alone. That is nonsense! We, as a Party, as people who
have learned something during this year of Soviet activity,
will not be so foolish as to think so, and we will warn the
masses not to think so. The employment of all the institutions of bourgeois capitalist society requires not only the
successful use of violence, but also organisation, discipline,
comradely discipline among the masses, the organisation of
proletarian influence over the rest of the population, the
creation of a new, mass environment, which will convince
the bourgeois specialists that they have no alternative, that
there can be no return to the old society, and that they can
do their work only in conjunction with the Communists who
are working by their side, who are leading the masses, who
enjoy the absolute confidence of the masses, and whose object is to ensure that the fruits of bourgeois science and technology, the fruits of thousands of years of the development of
civilisation, shall be enjoyed not by a handful of people for
the purpose of distinguishing themselves and amassing
wealth, but by literally all the working people.
This is an immensely difficult task, the fulfilment of which
will require decades! But to carry it out ,we must create
a force, a discipline, comradely discipline, Soviet discipline,
proletarian discipline, such as will not only physically crush
the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, but also encompass
them completely, subordinate them to our will, compel them
to proceed along our lines, to serve our cause.
I repeat that we come up against this problem every day in
the work of organising our military forces, in the work of
economic development, in the work of every economic
council, in the work of every factory committee and of every
nationalised factory. There was hardly a week during all
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
73
past year that the Council of People’s Commissars did not
discuss and settle this question in one way or another.
I am sure that there was not a single factory committee in
Russia, not a single agricultural commune, not a single state
farm, not a single uyezd land department which did not come
up against this issue scores of times in the course of the
past year’s Soviet activity.
This is what makes this task so difficult, but it is also what
makes it a really gratifying one. This is what we must do
now, the day after the exploiters were crushed by the force of
the proletarian insurrection. We suppressed their resistance—
this had to be done. But this is not the only thing that has to
be done. By the force of the new organisation, the comradely
organisation of the working people, we must compel them to
serve us. We must cure them of their old vices and prevent
them from relapsing into their exploiting practices. They
have remained bourgeois, and they occupy posts as commanders and staff officers in our army, as engineers and agronomists, and these old, bourgeois people call themselves Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. It does not matter what
they call themselves. They are bourgeois through and through,
from head to foot, in their outlook and in their habits.
Well, what shall we do, throw them out? You cannot
throw out hundreds of thousands! And if we did we should be
harming only ourselves. We have no other material with
which to build communism than that created by capitalism.
We must not throw them out, but break their resistance,
watch them at every step, make no political concessions to
them, which spineless people are inclined to do every minute.
Educated people yield to the policy and influence of the
bourgeoisie because they acquired all their education in a
bourgeois environment and from that environment. That is
why they stumble at every step and make political concessions
to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.
A Communist who says that he must not get into a state
where he will soil his hands, that he must have clean,
communist hands, and that he will build communist society
with clean communist hands and scorn the services of the
contemptible, counter-revolutionary bourgeois co-operators,
is a mere phrase-monger, because we cannot help resorting to
their services.
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The practical task that confronts us now is to enlist the
services of all those whom capitalism has trained to oppose
us, to watch them day after day, to place worker commissars
over them in an environment of communist organisation, day
after day to thwart their counter-revolutionary designs, and
at the same time to learn from them.
The science which we, at best, possess, is the science of the
agitator and propagandist, of the man who has been steeled
by the hellishly hard lot of the factory worker, or starving
peasant, a science which teaches us how to hold out for
a long time and to persevere in the struggle, and this has saved
us up to now. All this is necessary, but it is not enough.
With this alone we cannot triumph. In order that our victory
may be complete and final we must take all that is valuable
from capitalism, take all its science and culture.
How can we take it? We must learn from them, from our
enemies. Our advanced peasants, the class-conscious workers
in their factories, our officials in the uyezd land departments
must learn from the bourgeois agronomists, engineers, and
others, so as to acquire the fruits of their culture.
In this respect, the struggle that flared up in our Party
during the past year was extremely useful. It gave rise to
numerous sharp collisions, but there are no struggles without
sharp collisions. As a result, however, we gained practical
experience in a matter that had never before confronted us
but without which it is impossible to achieve communism.
I say again that the task of combining the victorious proletarian revolution with bourgeois culture, with bourgeois science and technology, which up to now has been available
to few people, is a difficult one. Here, everything depends on
the organisation and discipline of the advanced sections of
the working people. If, in Russia, the millions of downtrodden and ignorant peasants who are totally incapable of independent development, who were oppressed by the landowners
for centuries, did not have at their head, and by their side,
an advanced section of the urban workers whom they understood, with whom they were intimate, who enjoyed their
confidence, whom they believed as fellow-workers, if there
were not this organisation which is capable of rallying the
masses of the working people, of influencing them, of explaining to them and convincing them of the importance of the
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
75
task of taking over the entire bourgeois culture, the cause of
communism would be hopeless.
I say this not from the abstract point of view, but from
the point of view of a whole year’s daily experience. Although
this experience includes a multitude of petty details, sometimes dull and unpleasant, we must learn to see something
deeper in them. We must understand that these petty details,
these conflicts between, say, a factory committee and an
engineer, a Red Army man and some bourgeois officer, a peasant and a bourgeois agronomist—these conflicts, this friction, these petty details contain much that is immeasurably
deeper. We have vanquished the prejudice that these bourgeois specialists should be thrown out. We have taken over
this machine, it is still running badly, we have no illusions
on that score; it keeps stopping, it makes mistakes all the
time, it runs into ditches, and we drag it out again, but it
is moving, and we shall keep it on the right road. This is the
only way we can emerge from this quagmire of destruction,
frightful difficulties, ruin, barbarism, poverty and starvation
into which we were dragged by the war, and into which the
imperialists of all countries are trying to push us and keep us.
But we have begun to emerge, the first steps have been
taken.
This year of Soviet activity has taught us clearly to
understand the task in every individual case of work in the
factories and among the peasants, and we have mastered it.
Soviet power has gained tremendously by it in the past year,
and it has been worth while spending a year on it. We shall
not, as we did in the old days, discuss theoretically and in
general terms the importance of bourgeois specialists and the
importance of proletarian organisations, but at every step, in
every factory committee, and in every land organisation, we
shall make use of the experience we have gained. We have
laid the foundation of our Red Army, we now have a small
foundation, we now have nationalised factories where the
workers understand their tasks and have begun to increase
labour productivity with the aid of bourgeois specialists
(who at every step are trying to turn to the past while the
mass organisations of the workers are compelling them to
march forward in step with Soviet power)—all this is a great
gain for Soviet power. This work is imperceptible, there is
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V. I. L E N I N
nothing brilliant about it, it is difficult to appraise its real
value, but the very fact that from simply suppressing the exploiters we have advanced to a phase where we are learning
ourselves and teaching the masses how to build communism
with capitalist bricks and compel the capitalist bourgeois
specialists to work for us, is a step forward for our movement.
Only on this road shall we achieve victory. And now we know
that if we proceed as we have been up to now we shall really
achieve this victory.
Comrades, I now come to the last question that I want to
deal with, if only briefly, for I have already spoken too
long. I have in mind the question of our relations with the
countryside.
Up to now I have spoken about our activities in the military field, about the dictatorship, and about utilising the
services of bourgeois specialists. Now I want to deal with
another great difficulty that we encounter in our work of
communist construction.
What is to be done if the proletariat has taken power
in a country where the urban proletariat constitutes a minority of the population, while the majority are peasants
accustomed to work individually and deeply imbued with
habits of individual farming?
The majority of these peasants, however, have been so
ruined, impoverished and exhausted by the oppression of the
landowners and capitalists that they willingly render assistance to the proletariat. When an urban worker approaches
a peasant in a reasonable way, tactfully, as man to man,
and not as if he wants to be a boss, which arouses legitimate
hatred, he wins the peasant’s most comradely confidence and
complete support. We know that this is a fact, and Soviet
power in the villages is based on it. Soviet power has been
able to hold out only because it has been receiving the sincere support of the majority of the working people. We have
been receiving this support because the urban workers have
established contact with the rural poor in thousands of ways,
of which we have not even an inkling.
The state, which formerly hindered the establishment of
such contacts, is now doing all it can to facilitate it. This
alone explains why Soviet power has been able to hold
out and this is the sole pledge of victory.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
77
The enormous difficulties I have just referred to are due to
the peasants being accustomed to work individually and to
sell their grain freely. They think this is quite legitimate.
They argue as follows. How can it be that having worked so
hard to produce grain at the cost of so much sweat and blood,
we have no right to sell it as we please? The peasants consider themselves the injured party.
But we know from the entire development of Russia that
freedom to trade means freely breeding capitalists; and
freedom to trade in a country which has been exhausted by
starvation, where starving people are prepared to give anything, even to sell themselves into slavery, for a crust of bread,
freedom to trade when the country is starving means allowing
the minority freely to amass wealth and ruin the majority.
We must prove that help for the peasantry is a primary
task in a country which has been exhausted by starvation;
but we can help the peasantry only by uniting their activities, by uniting the masses, for the peasants are scattered,
disunited and accustomed to work and live out of contact
with one another.
There are no objective obstacles to the fulfilment of this
difficult task. All that had to be done by means of force,
has been done; we do not reject force, for we know that
there are kulaks among the peasants who are actively
resisting us and go to the length of organising whiteguard
revolts. This, however, does not apply to peasants in the
mass. The kulaks are a minority. As far as they are concerned, the only thing to do is to fight them and to keep
on fighting them. They must be crushed, and we are crushing
them. But after the successful fulfilment of the task of crushing the rural exploiters problems arise which cannot be solved
by the use of force. In this sphere, as in all the others, we can
fulfil our task only by means of mass organisation, by means
of the prolonged educational influence of the urban proletariat over the peasantry.
Shall we succeed in this tasks? Yes, we know from experience
that we shall, and only because the vast majority of the
peasants have confidence in the workers’ government and on
the basis of this confidence in the workers we can reinforce
the foundation we have begun to build, and which we must
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V. I. L E N I N
continue to build, but only by means of comradely influence
and discipline.
This is the practical task that now confronts us.
When we established the Poor Peasants’ Committees, 16
when we tried to introduce barter with the rural districts,
we did so not to enable the rich peasants to obtain goods, but
primarily to enable the poor peasants to obtain the small
quantities of goods that the cities could provide so that
by helping the poor we would be able with their aid to beat
the kulaks and take their surplus grain.
It has been an extremely difficult task to supply grain to
the population of a vast country with poor transport facilities and a scattered peasantry, and it has given us the most
trouble. I recall all the meetings of the Council of People’s
Commissars and must say that the Soviet government has
not worked so persistently on anything as it has on this.
Our peasants are extremely scattered and disunited. In the
rural districts ignorance and the habit of working individually are more deep rooted than anywhere: The rural population
is dissatisfied with not being allowed freedom to trade in
grain. And in this situation, of course, political crooks, all
sorts of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, incite the
peasantry by saying to them, “They are robbing you!”
There are scoundrels who after a year of Soviet activity
when, incidentally, food supply authorities have shown that
during the past few months we supplied the rural districts
with 42,000 carloads of goods and received in exchange only
39,000 carloads of grain—there are scoundrels, I say, who,
after this come along and yell, “Peasants, the Soviet government is robbing you!”
At a time when the workers in the towns are on the verge
of exhaustion—and nowhere is there such terrible hunger as
in the towns and in the non-agricultural parts of Russia—
when the peasants have taken all the land and grain that
belonged to landowners, and when the bulk of the peasants,
as we know, in the first year of Soviet power worked for themselves and not for the landowners and merchants and are now
feeding better than they did before, when the population of
the urban and non-agricultural districts of the country
is starving and all the capitalists are trying to crush us by
famine, at such a time people wearing Menshevik, Socialist-
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
79
Revolutionary, or other clownish costumes, have the
insolence to shout, “They are robbing you!” These people
are agents of capitalism, and we must treat them as such and
nothing else!
At a time when the main difficulty confronting the Soviet
government is the famine, it is the duty of every Soviet
citizen to hand over all his surplus grain to the famine-stricken. This is so clear and obvious, so intelligible to every working man, that nobody can say a word against it. One must be
a scoundrel, a political crook, to obscure this plain, clear and
obvious truth, to make it unintelligible, or distort it!
It is on this truth that the urban workers rely. It is because
this truth is so obvious that they are able to do their extremely difficult job. Up to now they have told the poor peasants
that they and the workers constitute the real bulwark of
Soviet power, that is why the working class has established
Poor Peasants’ Committees, organised barter, and made
it obligatory for the co-operatives to include the whole
population. All the decrees on agriculture issued up to now
have this main idea running through them. And in all our
appeals to the urban workers we have said, “Unite with the
rural poor, for unless you do, you will be unable to solve
the most important and most difficult problem, namely, the
bread problem.” And to the peasants we said, “Either you
unite with the urban workers, in which case we shall triumph; or you allow yourselves to be misled by the admonitions and exhortations of the capitalists and their servants and
flunkeys in Menshevik garb, who say, ‘Don’t let the towns
rob you, trade as you please, the rich get richer, what do
you care if people are dying of starvation’, in which case
you yourselves will perish, you will become the slaves of
the capitalists and cause the ruin of Soviet Russia.” It
was only under capitalism that people argued, “I shall trade,
I shall get rich. Every man for himself and God for all.”
This was the principle of capitalism and it engendered war;
that is why the workers and peasants were poor, and an
insignificant number of people became multimillionaires.
The problem is how to approach the peasants in the course
of practical work, how to organise the poor and middle peasants so as to be able at every step to combat their gravita-
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V. I. L E N I N
tion towards the past, their attempts to go back to free trading activities, their constant striving to be “free” producers. The word “freedom” is a good word. We meet it at every
step: freedom to trade, freedom to sell, freedom to sell oneself, and so forth. And there are Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries, rascals, who garble and distort this
beautiful word “freedom” in every newspaper and in every
speech. But these are all crooks, capitalism’s prostitutes,
who are trying to drag the people back to the past.
Lastly, the main object of the attention and activities
of the Council of People’s Commissars as well as of the Council of Defence has recently, during the past few months and
weeks, been the fight against the famine.
The famine is particularly disastrous for us at the present
time, on the threshold of the spring; and the spring threatens
to be a most severe period for us. Just as last year the most
severe period was the end of winter, the spring and the beginning of the summer, so, this year, we are now on the threshold
of a severe period. The whiteguards, landowners and capitalists have greater hopes of being able to play on the famine as
a means of crushing Soviet power since they have been unable
to do it in open struggle.
The people who call themselves Mensheviks and Right or
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries have sunk so low that they
claim to side with the working people but when the food
situation becomes more acute and famine is approaching they
try to take advantage of it and incite the masses of the people
against the workers’ and peasants’ government. They do not
understand that this sort of policy today, this incitement and
these attempts by the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to make
capital out of the famine, ostensibly for the benefit of the
workers, are direct assistance to the whiteguards, just as
much as was the treachery of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary
Muravyov on the Eastern Front last year, which cost the lives
of tens of thousands of workers and peasants. Any such agitation costs thousands more lives in the war against the whiteguards. When Muravyov committed his act of treachery last
year, he opened up almost the entire front to the enemy and
caused us a number of severe reverses.
That is why I should like primarily and mainly to deal
very briefly with the major facts.
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
81
Although today our food situation has become worse, just
as it did last spring, we have every hope that we shall not
only overcome this difficulty but shall cope with it better
than we did last year. This hope is based on the fact that
the situation in the East and South has greatly improved;
and the East and South are the main granaries of Russia.
At a number of meetings of the Council of Defence and the
Council of People’s Commissars held during the past few
days we ascertained very definitely that about nine million
poods of grain have been piled up on the railways between
Kazan and Saratov, and on the Volga-Bugulma line, to
the east of Samara, across the Volga.
The great difficulty, and great danger, is that our railways
are in such a state of disrepair, and the shortage of locomotives
is so considerable, that we are not sure of being able to move
all this grain. This is what we have concentrated our main
attention and activities on during the past few days, and
that is why we resolved to resort to a measure like the suspension of all passenger traffic from March 18 to April 10.
We know that this is a harsh measure. Agitators who are
helping the whiteguards will no doubt come along and
shout, “Look, the people are starving, and yet passenger
traffic has been stopped, to make it impossible to carry
grain.” Agitators of this type will certainly appear. But
we tell ourselves that in all cases of difficulty we rely on the
class-consciousness of the honest workers, and they will side
with us.
According to the calculations of the experts, the suspension
of passenger traffic will release 220 locomotives. These passenger locomotives are less powerful than freight locomotives,
they cannot haul as much; but we have estimated that during
this period they will be able to haul about three and a half
million poods of grain. Individual food profiteers and the
starving people who roam all over the country in search of
grain, would, at the most, be able to carry half a million
poods in such a period. This will be confirmed by every experienced railway worker, by everybody, who has been on the
Trans-Volga line and has seen the grain heaped up, sometimes
right on the bare snow. The sacks of grain may be damaged;
as it is the grain is moist, and the situation will become worse
when the spring thaw commences. We therefore resorted to
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V. I. L E N I N
this harsh measure, convinced that the truth cannot be concealed from the vast masses of the workers, that the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries will not succeed in misleading
them, that truth will prevail.
This harsh measure, the suspension of passenger traffic,
will provide us with several million poods of grain. We must
brush aside the lies, slander and fairy-tales to the effect that
it is harmful to suspend passenger traffic and say that with
the assistance of the Petrograd, Moscow and Ivanovo-Voznesensk workers who are being sent to the South, it will provide
a sufficient quantity of grain. Incidentally, I will remind you
that no city has devoted so much effort to the organisation
of food supplies as Petrograd. All the best forces in that city
have already been mustered for the work, and this is what
the workers in the other advanced cities should do, too.
The socialist revolution cannot be accomplished without
the working class. It cannot be accomplished if the working
class has not accumulated sufficient forces to be able to lead
the tens of millions of exhausted, illiterate, and scattered
rural people who had been crushed by capitalism. Only the
advanced workers can lead them. But our best forces have
already been used up, they are weary and exhausted. Their
places must be taken by average people and young forces.
Probably they will make mistakes, but that does not matter
so long as they are devoted to the workers’ cause, and so
long as they have been brought up in the environment of
the proletarian struggle.
We have already taken measures to send our best forces
to the Volga-Bugulma Railway. Comrade Bryukhanov has
gone there accompanied by a group of workers. Army detachments accompanied by workers have been sent to other
lines, too, and, I repeat, there are good grounds for hoping
that we shall obtain grain. A severe half-year lies ahead of us,
but this will be the last severe half-year, because instead
of an enemy who is becoming stronger, we have in front of
us an enemy who is disintegrating, for the Soviet movement
is growing in all countries.
These are the grounds on which, after discussing the matter most carefully and verifying our calculations again
and again, we say that the suspension of passenger traffic
will enable us to bring in several million poods of grain and
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
83
use the extremely rich granaries of the East and South. In
the course of this severe half-year we shall vanquish our chief
enemy, the famine. Moreover, our position today is much
better than it was last year, because we now have reserves.
Last year the Czechoslovaks reached Kazan and Simbirsk;
the Ukraine was under the heel of the Germans; Krasnov,
financed by the Germans, was mustering troops in the Don
region, and we were cut off from the South. Today the
Ukraine is being liberated from the German imperialists.
The latter had planned to ship 60,000,000 poods of grain to
Germany, but they shipped only 9,000,000 poods, and with
it something they cannot digest, namely, Bolshevism. This
is what upset the German imperialists, and this is what
will upset the French and British imperialists if it
becomes possible for them to advance farther into Russia.
We now have a Soviet Ukraine. And when it comes to
supplying us with grain, the Soviet Government of the Ukraine
will not fix its price like a huckster, a profiteer, or a muzhik
who says, “The starving will give me a 1,000 rubles
a pood. To hell with the state monopoly. All I want is to
get rich. If the people are starving, all the better, they
will pay more.” This is the way the rural bourgeoisie, the
kulaks, the profiteers argue, and they are being assisted by
all those who agitate against the state grain monopoly, by
those who stand for “freedom” to trade, that is, freedom for
the rich muzhik to amass wealth, and freedom for the workers who are getting nothing to starve to death. But the Ukrainian Government said, “Our first task is to help the starving
North. The Ukraine cannot hold out if the North, which is
exhausted by famine, does not hold out. The Ukraine will
hold out, and her victory will be certain, if she helps the
starving North.”
In the Ukraine there are huge stocks of grain. We cannot
ship it all at once. We have sent our best Soviet forces to
the Ukraine and already they all report in one voice that the
stocks of grain are enormous, but they cannot be dispatched
all at once, we haven’t the machinery for it. The Germans
devastated the Ukraine to such a degree that the machinery
of administration must be built entirely anew, and this
has only just begun. Complete chaos reigns there. The worst
period, the first weeks at Smolny after the October Revolu-
84
V. I. L E N I N
tion when we were trying to overcome the chaos, was nothing
compared with the difficulties that are now being experienced
in the Ukraine. The Ukrainian comrades are complaining
bitterly about the lack of people, lack of forces with which to
build up the Soviet government. They have no machinery of
administration, they have no proletarian centre like Petrograd or Moscow, for the Ukrainian proletarian centres are
occupied by the enemy. Kiev is not a proletarian centre. The
Donets Basin, exhausted by starvation, has not yet been
liberated from the Cossacks. Our Ukrainian comrades cry,
“Workers of the North, come to our assistance!”
And that is why we, on behalf of the Ukrainian comrades,
say to the Petrograd workers, knowing that they have done
more than the workers of any other city, “Do a little more,
make another effort!” Now we can and must come to the aid
of our Ukrainian comrades, because they must build up the
machinery of the Soviet state on a site that was cleared
and laid waste by suffering as no other place has been!
We discussed the situation in the Central Committee of
our Party and gave instructions that everything should
first be done to help to build up administrative machinery
in the Ukraine, and in return for this, when this machinery is
available, to set to work to obtain 50,000,000 poods of grain
by June 1.
I do not in the least wish to assert that this will be done.
We all know that of all the tasks we undertook, not one was
fulfilled by the appointed date. Suppose only part of this task
is fulfilled; at all events you will know definitely that when
things get worse, when the famine here becomes more acute,
and when the food supply machinery will be working at top
speed in the East and South, we shall be able to obtain urgent
aid from the South and improve our situation.
In addition to the Ukraine, we have another source of
grain supply—the Don region. There, the victories of the Red
Army have already worked miracles. Several weeks ago the
situation on the Don, in the war against Krasnov, against
our main enemy, against the officers and Cossacks who
received millions in bribes, first from the Germans and then
from the British and French, who are still continuing to help
them—several weeks ago, our position was very serious.
But now we have, with tremendous speed, regained territory
ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
85
not only up to Tsaritsyn, but farther to the south. The forces
of Krasnov and the Don counter-revolutionaries have been
broken in spite of the assistance they received from the imperialists.
What does this mean? It means that we are getting nearer
to coal and grain, for the lack of which we are perishing—
owing to the shortage of coal, the railways and factories are
coming to a standstill, and owing to the shortage of grain,
the workers in the towns, and in the non-agricultural
districts generally, are suffering the pangs of starvation.
In the Don area, as in the Ukraine, the grain stocks are
enormous. Furthermore, it cannot be said that there is no
administrative machinery in the Don area. In every military
unit there is a Communist group, worker commissars, and
groups of food supply workers. The greatest difficulty there
is that neither of the two main railway lines can be used
because the whiteguards, on retreating, blew up the
bridges.
The last meeting of the Council of Defence and the Council of People’s Commissars was attended by experts whom
we asked how material could be obtained to repair the lines,
and how at least one of them could be repaired. At the last
meeting of the Council of Defence we were able to assure ourselves that thanks to an enormous exertion of effort not only
were materials provided, but the comrades on the spot assured
us, almost guaranteed, that both lines would be repaired before the spring thaw. The resumption of traffic on these two
lines is perhaps worth many victories over the Cossacks and
enables us to say that we must hold on for another few severe
months, we must strain every nerve, obtain the assistance
of the Petrograd, Moscow and Ivanovo-Voznesensk workers.
In addition to the East, from where it is difficult to ship anything, in addition to the Ukraine, where there are vast stocks
but no administrative machinery, we have the Don region,
which has been reconquered by the Red Army. That is why
we cautiously, after cool calculation, after verifying all
this by means of repeated reports and communications from
the people on the spot and hearing the statements of food
supply and railway experts, say that we have very good
grounds for believing that we can not only hold out as we
held out last year, but also greatly improve our conditions.
86
V. I. L E N I N
Our internal enemy is collapsing, and our external enemy
cannot possibly hold out for long. Comrades, we were particularly convinced of this by what we heard from our foreign
comrades who arrived here, and jointly with whom we recently formed the Communist International in Moscow. In Paris,
speakers at public meetings who attack Bolshevism are driven from the platform. Yes, victory will be ours! The imperialists may yet shed the blood of thousands and thousands
of workers, murder Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht,
and hundreds of the best representatives of the International,
they may fill the prisons in Britain, France, Germany and
Italy with socialists, but this will not avail them! Victory
will be ours! For in spite of all the lies and the torrents of
abuse and filthy slander that are poured out against us, the
workers of all countries now understand what is meant by
Soviets, by Soviet power. The capitalists of no country have
a way out. I repeat that when they conclude peace they will
be at loggerheads. France is ready to hurl herself upon Italy,
they are quarrelling over the division of the booty. Japan is
arming against America. They have imposed upon the peoples an incredible burden of tribute, millions upon millions of
war debts. But everywhere the people are exhausted by war,
everywhere there is a shortage of food, industry is at a standstill, and starvation reigns. The Entente, which is promising
right and left to help the counter-revolutionaries, cannot
feed its own countries. The masses of the workers in Paris,
in London and in New York have translated the word “Soviet” into their own languages, they have made it intelligible
for every worker, for they know that the old bourgeois
republic cannot help their cause, that only a workers’ government can help them.
Soviet Russia encounters enormous difficulties because
the military forces of the most well-armed and most powerful
countries of the world have been hurled against her. In spite
of this, Soviet power in Russia has succeeded in winning the
sympathy, the attention and moral support of the workers
of the world. And on the basis of these facts, not exaggerating in the least, and not shutting our eyes to the fact that in
Germany and in other countries workers’ blood is flowing
and many of the best socialist leaders are being brutally done
to death—we know this and do not shut our eyes to it—we
FROM MARX
TO MAO
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ACHIEVEMENTS AND DIFFICULTIES
87
assert that victory, complete victory, will be ours, because
the power of the imperialists in the other countries has been
shaken, while the workers are emerging from their state of
stultification and deception. Soviet power has already won
recognition from the workers of all countries. Everywhere the
Soviets, the capture of power by the workers themselves, are
regarded as the only hope.
And when the workers learn that the united workers even
in an underdeveloped and backward country, after capturing power, have succeeded in creating a force that is resisting the imperialists of the whole world, when they learn
that these workers have succeeded in taking the factories
from the capitalists and in giving to the peasants the land
that formerly belonged to the landowners—when this truth
reaches the masses of workers of all countries, we shall be
able once again to say loudly, and with firm conviction,
that our victory on a world scale is assured, for the power
of the bourgeoisie has been shaken, it will no longer succeed
in deceiving the workers, for the Soviet movement has
sprung up everywhere. And just as we saw the birth of the
Soviet Republic on October 25, 1917, and the birth of the
Third, Communist International a few days ago in Moscow,
so we shall soon see the birth of a World Soviet Republic.
(The speech was interrupted by applause and ended in
an ovation.)
I should very much like the Petrograd comrades to print
the following as a foreword or afterword to my speech, even
if only in small type.
April 17
Lenin
AFTERWORD
17
After spending no little effort in correcting the verbatim
report of my speech, I am compelled to make the following
urgent request to all comrades who want to report my
speeches for the press.
My request is that they should never rely on the shorthand or any other verbatim reports of my speeches, never
88
V. I. L E N I N
make any endeavour to obtain such reports, and never publish such reports of my speeches.
Instead of publishing the shorthand reports of my
speeches let them, if necessary, publish summaries of them. I
have seen newspaper summaries of my speeches that were
satisfactory; but I have never seen a single verbatim report
of my speeches that was at all satisfactory. Whether this
is due to the fact that I speak too fast, or that I do not
construct my sentences properly, or to some other reason,
I will not undertake to say; but the fact remains that I have
never seen a single satisfactory shorthand, or any other
verbatim report of my speeches.
A good summary of a speech is better than a bad verbatim
report. That is why I request that no verbatim report of my
speeches should ever be published.
April 17, 1919
N. Lenin
89
SPEECH IN MEMORY OF Y. M. SVERDLOV
AT A SPECIAL SESSION
OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
MARCH 18, 1919
Comrades, today, when the workers of all countries are
honouring the memory of the heroic rise and tragic end of
the Paris Commune we have to inter the remains of Yakov
Mikhailovich Sverdlov. In the course of our revolution, and
in its victories, Comrade Sverdlov succeeded in expressing
more fully and integrally than anybody else the chief and
most important features of the proletarian revolution, and
this, even more than his boundless devotion to the cause of
the revolution, made him significant as a leader of the proletarian revolution.
Comrades, people who judge by what they see on the
surface, the numerous enemies of our revolution, and those
who to this day vacillate between the revolution and its
opponents, consider the most striking feature of our revolution to be the determined and relentlessly firm way it
has dealt with the exploiters and the enemies of the working
people. There is no doubt that without this, without revolutionary violence, the proletariat could not have triumphed.
Nor can there be any doubt that revolutionary violence
was a necessary and legitimate weapon of the revolution
only at definite stages of its development, only under definite and special conditions, and that a far more profound
and permanent feature of this revolution and condition of
its victory was, and remains, the organisation of the proletarian masses, the organisation of the working people.
90
V. I. L E N I N
And it is this organisation of millions of working people
that constitutes the best stimulant for the revolution, its
deepest source of victory. And it is this feature of the proletarian revolution which, in the course of the struggle,
brought to the fore those leaders who best expressed that
specific feature of our revolution that was never seen in
revolutions before, namely, the organisation of the masses.
This feature of the proletarian revolution also brought to
the fore Yakov Sverdlov, a man who was first and foremost
an organiser.
Comrades, we Russian revolutionaries, particularly in
the stern days of the prolonged, sometimes painful and
excessively long period of preparation for the revolution,
suffered because of the gulf between theory, principle and programme and our practical work. We suffered most of all
from a too deep engrossment in theory divorced from direct
action.
The history of the Russian revolutionary movement over
a period of many decades contains a list of martyrs who were
devoted to the revolutionary cause, but who had no opportunity to put their revolutionary ideals into practice. In this
respect, the proletarian revolution, for the first time, provided these formerly isolated heroes of the revolutionary
struggle with real ground, a real basis, a real environment,
a real audience, and a real proletarian army in which they
could display their talents. And in this respect, the most
outstanding leaders are those who, as practical, efficient
organisers, have succeeded in winning for themselves an
exceptionally prominent place such as Yakov Sverdlov won
for himself and rightly occupied.
If we survey the life of this leader of the proletarian revolution we see that his wonderful organising talents developed
in the course of long struggle. We see that this leader of the
proletarian revolution himself cultivated every one of his
wonderful gifts as a great revolutionary who had passed
through and experienced different epochs in the severest
conditions of revolutionary activity. He dedicated himself
entirely to the revolution in the very first period of his
activities, when still a youth who had barely acquired political consciousness. In that period, at the very beginning
of the twentieth century, Comrade Sverdlov stood before
SPEECH IN MEMORY OF Y. M. SVERDLOV
91
us as the most perfect type of professional revolutionary,
a man who had entirely given up his family and all the
comforts and habits of the old bourgeois society, a man who
devoted himself heart and soul to the revolution, and who
for many years, even decades, passing from prison to exile
and from exile to prison, cultivated those characteristics
which steeled revolutionaries for many, many years.
However, this professional revolutionary never, not even
for a moment, lost contact with the masses. Although the
conditions of tsarism condemned him, like all the revolutionaries of those days, mainly to underground, illegal
activities, even then, even in those underground and illegal
activities, Sverdlov always marched shoulder to shoulder
and hand in hand with the advanced workers who, at
the beginning of the twentieth century, began to take
the place of the earlier generation of revolutionary
intellectuals.
It was at this time that scores and hundreds of advanced
workers took up activities and acquired that steel-like
hardness in the revolutionary struggle which, together
with the closest contact with the masses, made it possible
to bring about a successful proletarian revolution in Russia. It is precisely this long period of illegal activity that
most of all characterises the man who was constantly in the
fight, who never lost contact with the masses, who never
left Russia, who always worked in conjunction with the
best of the workers, and who, in spite of the isolation from
general life to which persecution condemned the revolutionary, succeeded in becoming not only a beloved leader of
the workers, not only a leader who was most familiar with
practical work, but also an organiser of the advanced proletarians. Some people were of the opinion—and this applies mostly to our opponents, or to the waverers—that this
complete absorption in illegal activities, this specific feature
of the professional revolutionary, cut him off from the
masses. But the revolutionary activities of Yakov Sverdlov
prove to us how utterly mistaken this opinion was, that, on
the contrary, this boundless devotion to the revolutionary
cause, which is typical of the lives of people who had seen the
inside of many prisons and had been in exile in the remotest
regions of Siberia, produced such leaders, the flower of our
92
V. I. L E N I N
proletariat. And when this was combined with a knowledge of
men and organisational ability, it produced great organisers.
The illegal circles, revolutionary underground work, the
illegal Party, which nobody personified or expressed so
integrally as Yakov Sverdlov—this was the practical school
through which he passed, and the only school that could
have enabled him to reach the position of the first man in
the first socialist Soviet Republic, the position of the first
organiser of the broad proletarian masses.
Comrades, all those who, like myself, have had occasion
to work with Comrade Sverdlov day after day, had it vividly
brought home to them that it was the exceptional organising
talent of this man which gave us that which we have been so
proud of, so justly proud of, up to now. He made it possible
for us to carry on concerted, efficient, really organised activities, activities worthy of the organised proletarian masses,
and answering to the requirements of the proletarian
revolution—those concerted, organised activities without
which we could not have achieved a single success, without
which we could not have overcome any one of the innumerable
difficulties which we have had to face, and without which
we would not have been able to stand up to any one of the
severe trials we experienced in the past, and are experiencing at the present time.
In that seething struggle that is revolution, at that
special post which every revolutionary occupies, at a time
when the work of even a small body of men takes the form
of deliberations, of enormous importance is high moral
prestige won in the course of the struggle, unquestionable
and unchallenged prestige, the roots of which lie, of course,
not in abstract morals, but in the morals of the revolutionary
fighter, the morals of the rank and file of the revolutionary
masses.
The fact that for over a year we have been able to bear
the incredible burdens that have fallen to the lot of a narrow circle of devoted revolutionaries, the fact that the leading groups could so firmly, quickly, and unanimously
decide the most difficult problems, is due entirely to the
prominent place among them occupied by such an exceptionally talented organiser as Yakov Sverdlov. He alone
managed to acquire an amazing knowledge of the leading
SPEECH IN MEMORY OF Y. M. SVERDLOV
93
men of the proletarian movement, he alone, in the course
of the long years of struggle—to which I can refer here only
very briefly—succeeded in acquiring the wonderful intuition of the practical worker, the wonderful talent of an organiser, an absolutely unchallenged prestige, thanks to which
he was able to take sole charge of some of the largest
branches of the work of the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee which only a group of ordinary people could cope
with. He alone succeeded in winning for himself such a
position that on a large number of extremely big and important practical questions of organisation, his mere word
was sufficient to secure an unchallenged and final settlement, without conferences, without a formal vote; and everybody felt convinced that the questions had been settled
on the basis of such profound practical knowledge and organising intuition that not only hundreds and thousands of
advanced workers, but also the masses would accept that
settlement as final.
History long ago proved that in the course of the struggle great revolutions bring great men to the forefront and
develop talents that had previously seemed impossible.
Nobody would have believed that the school of the illegal
study circle and underground activities, the school of the
small, persecuted Party, the school of Turukhansk prison
could produce this organiser who won absolutely unchallenged prestige, the organiser of Soviet power throughout
Russia, the man, unique in his knowledge, who organised
the work of the Party which created the Soviets and established the Soviet government which is now making its
arduous, painful, bloody but triumphant advance to all
nations, to all countries throughout the world.
We shall never be able to replace this man who had cultivated such an exceptional organising talent, if by replacement we mean finding one man, one comrade, with all
these qualities. Nobody who has been close to Yakov Sverdlov and has watched him constantly at work can have any
doubt that in this respect he is irreplaceable. The work he
performed as an organiser, in choosing men and appointing
them to responsible posts in all the various departments,
will be performed in future only if we appoint whole groups
of men to handle the different major departments that he had
94
V. I. L E N I N
sole charge of, and if these men, following in his footsteps,
come near to doing what this one man did alone.
But the proletarian revolution is strong precisely because
its roots run deep. We know that it promotes new men to
take the place of those who devotedly sacrificed their lives
in the struggle, they are perhaps less experienced, possess
less knowledge, and are at first less trained, but they are
men who have broad contacts with the masses and who are
capable of promoting from their ranks groups of men to take
the place of the departed geniuses, to continue their cause,
to continue along the road they pursued and to complete
what they had begun. In this respect we are fully convinced
that the proletarian revolution in Russia and all over the
world will promote group after group of men, numerous
sections of the proletariat and of the working peasantry,
which will possess that practical knowledge of life, that
organising talent, collective if not individual, without which
the million-strong army of the proletariat cannot achieve
victory.
The memory of Comrade Yakov Sverdlov will serve not
only as a permanent symbol of the revolutionary’s devotion
to his cause and as the model of how to combine a practical
sober mind, practical skill, close contact with the masses
and ability to guide them; it is also a pledge that evergrowing numbers of proletarians, guided by these examples,
will march forward to the complete victory of the world
communist revolution.
Pravda No. 6 0 ,
March 2 0 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the verbatim report,
verified with the Pravda text
95
SPEECH
DELIVERED AT THE FUNERAL
OF YAKOV SVERDLOV
MARCH 18, 1919
NEWSPAPER REPORT
We have lowered into the grave the remains of a proletarian leader who did more than anybody to organise the
working class and to ensure victory. Now that Soviet power
is spreading throughout the world and the knowledge is
rapidly gaining ground of how the proletariat, organised in
Soviets, is struggling to put its ideas into effect, we are
burying a representative of the proletariat who set an example
of how to fight for these ideas.
Millions of proletarians will repeat our words: Long
live the memory of Comrade Sverdlov. At his graveside we
solemnly vow to fight still harder for the overthrow of
capital and for the complete emancipation of the working
people....”
Published in Vecherniye
Izvestia Moskovskogo Soveta
No. 1 9 6 , March 1 9 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the newspaper text
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.) 18
First published in 1 9 3 0
Draft Programme section on
the national question first
published in 1 9 2 5
Rough draft of the Programme
of the R.C.P. first published
in full in the Fourth (Russian)
Edition of the Collected Works
Published according to
manuscript and typewritten copies
81
).B (.P.C.R EHT FO EMMARGORP TFARD
ot gnidrocca dehsilbuP
seipoc nettirwepyt dna tpircsunam
0 3 9 1 ni dehsilbup tsriF
no noitces emmargorP tfarD
tsrif noitseuq lanoitan eht
5 2 9 1 ni dehsilbup
emmargorP eht fo tfard hguoR
dehsilbup tsrif .P.C.R eht fo
)naissuR( htruoF eht ni lluf ni
skroW detcelloC eht fo noitidE
99
1
ROUGH DRAFT OF THE PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.
Plan. The programme shall consist of the following sections.
1. Preamble. The proletarian revolution has begun in
Russia and is rapidly spreading everywhere. To understand
the revolution it is necessary to understand the nature of
capitalism and the inevitability of its development towards
the dictatorship of the proletariat. 2. Capitalism and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. On this point repeat the
main section of our old Marxist programme, drawn up by
Plekhanov, so as to explain also the “historical roots” of
our world outlook. 3. Imperialism. To be taken from the
draft programme of May 1917. 4. Three trends in the world
working-class movement and the new International. Revision of the draft of May 1917. 5. The fundamental tasks of
the proletarian dictatorship in Russia. To be taken from the
draft of December 1917 - January 1918. 19 6. These tasks in
the political sphere to be formulated concretely (new).
7. Ditto in the national, religious, educational spheres (new).
8. Ditto in economic sphere (new). 9. Ditto in agrarian
sphere (new). 10. Ditto as regards protection of the working
people (to be written by Schmidt). 11 and 12. To be added
on other spheres (not yet written).
Much in this rough draft is unfinished, especially the
editorial aspect of it, and in some cases, instead of programme
formulations, commentaries have been provisionally taken.
(1) The Revolution of October 25 (November 7), 1917
established the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia
which began, with the support of the poor peasantry or
semi-proletariat, to build a communist society. The growth
100
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of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all
advanced countries, the universal emergence and development of the Soviet form of that movement, i.e., a form
which aims directly at the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, lastly, the beginning and progress of the revolution in Austria-Hungary and, particularly,
in Germany, all goes to show vividly that the era of the
world proletarian, communist revolution has begun.
(2) The causes, significance and aims of this revolution
can be correctly understood, first, by making clear the real
nature, the fundamental character of capitalism and of
bourgeois society, and the inevitability of their development
towards communism; and secondly, by making clear the
nature of imperialism and of imperialist wars, which have
accelerated the collapse of capitalism and have placed the
proletarian revolution on the order of the day.
*
*
*
(3) The nature of capitalism and of the bourgeois society
which still dominates in most civilised countries and the
development of which inevitably leads, and has been leading, to the world communist revolution of the proletariat,
was described in our old Marxist programme in the following terms.
(4) “The principal specific feature of this society is commodity production based on capitalist production relations,
under which the most important and major part of the means
of production and exchange of commodities belongs to a
numerically small class of persons while the vast majority
of the population is made up of proletarians and semiproletarians, who, owing to their economic position, are
compelled permanently or periodically to sell their labourpower, i.e., to hire themselves out to the capitalists and
to create by their labour the incomes of the upper classes
of society.
(5) “The ascendancy of capitalist production relations
extends its area more and more with the steady improvement
of technology, which, by enhancing the economic importance of the large enterprises, tends to eliminate the small
independent producers, converting some of them into pro-
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101
letarians and narrowing the role of others in the social
and economic sphere, and in some places making them more or
less completely, more or less obviously, more or less painfully dependent on capital.
(6) “Moreover, this technical progress enables the employers to make growing use of female and child labour in
the process of production and exchange of commodities.
And since, on the other hand, it causes a relative decrease in
the employers’ demand for human labour-power, the demand
for labour-power necessarily lags behind its supply, as
a result of which the dependence of wage-labour on capital is
increased and exploitation of labour rises to a higher level.
(7) “This state of affairs in the bourgeois countries and
the steadily growing competition among them in the world
market make it more and more difficult for them to sell
the goods which are produced in ever-increasing quantities.
Over-production, manifesting itself in more or less acute
industrial crises followed by more or less protracted periods
of industrial stagnation, is an inevitable consequence of the
development of the productive forces in bourgeois society.
Crises and periods of industrial stagnation, in their turn,
still further ruin the small producers, still further increase
the dependence of wage-labour on capital, and lead still
more rapidly to the relative and sometimes to the absolute
deterioration of the condition of the working class.
(8) “Thus, improvement in technology, signifying increased
labour productivity and greater social wealth, becomes in
bourgeois society the cause of greater social inequality, of
widening gulfs between the rich and poor, of greater insecurity, unemployment, and various hardships of the mass
of the working people.
(9) “However, in proportion as all these contradictions,
which are inherent in bourgeois society, grow and develop,
so also does the discontent of the toiling and exploited
masses with the existing order of things grow; the numerical
strength and solidarity of the proletarians increase and
their struggle against their exploiters is sharpened. At the
same time, by concentrating the means of production and
exchange and socialising the process of labour in capitalist
enterprises, the improvement in technology more and more
rapidly creates the material possibility of capitalist pro-
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duction relations being superseded by communist relations,
i.e., the possibility of bringing about the social revolution,
which is the ultimate aim of all the activities of the international communist party as the conscious exponent of
the class movement of the proletariat.
(10) “By introducing social in place of private ownership
of the means of production and exchange, by introducing
planned organisation of social production to ensure the
well-being and many-sided development of all the members
of society, the proletarian social revolution will do away
with the division of society into classes and thereby emancipate the whole of oppressed humanity, for it will put an
end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by
another.
(11) “A necessary condition for this social revolution is
the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest by the
proletariat of such political power as will enable it to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters. Aiming at
making the proletariat capable of fulfilling its great historic mission, the international communist party organises
the proletariat in an independent political party opposed
to all the bourgeois parties, guides all the manifestations
of its class struggle, reveals to it the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the exploiters and those of the
exploited, and explains to the proletariat the historical
significance of and the necessary conditions for the impending social revolution. At the same time it reveals to all
the other toiling and exploited masses the hopelessness of
their position in capitalist society and the need for a social
revolution if they are to free themselves from the yoke of
capital. The Communist Party, the party of the working
class, calls upon all sections of the working and exploited
population to join its ranks insofar as they adopt the standpoint of the proletariat.”
*
*
*
(12) World capitalism has at the present time, i.e., about
the beginning of the twentieth century, reached the stage
of imperialism. Imperialism, or the epoch of finance capital is a high stage of development of the capitalist economic
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103
system, one in which monopoly associations of capitalists—
syndicates, cartels, and trusts—have assumed decisive importance; in which enormously concentrated banking capital
has fused with industrial capital; in which the export of
capital to foreign countries has assumed vast dimensions;
in which the whole world has been divided up territorially
among the richer countries, and the economic carve-up of
the world among international trusts has begun.
(13) Imperialist wars, i.e., wars for world domination,
for markets for banking capital and for the subjugation of
small and weaker nations, are inevitable under such a state
of affairs. The first great imperialist war, the war of 1914-18,
is precisely such a war.
(14) The extremely high level of development which world
capitalism in general has attained, the replacement of free
competition by monopoly capitalism, the fact that the banks
and the capitalist associations have prepared the machinery
for the social regulation of the process of production and
distribution of products, the rise in the cost of living and
increased oppression of the working class by the syndicates
due to the growth of capitalist monopolies, the tremendous
obstacles standing in the way of the proletariat’s economic
and political struggle, the horrors, misery, ruin, and brutalisation caused by the imperialist war—all these factors
transform the present stage of capitalist development into
an era of proletarian socialist revolution.
That era has dawned.
(15) Only a proletarian socialist revolution can lead humanity out of the impasse which imperialism and imperialist wars have created. Whatever difficulties the revolution
may have to encounter, whatever possible temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution it may have to contend with, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.
*
*
*
(16) The victory of the proletarian revolution calls for
the complete confidence, the closest fraternal alliance and
the greatest possible unity of revolutionary action on the
part of the working class of all the advanced countries.
These conditions cannot be created without a determined,
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V. I. L E N I N
principled rupture with, and a relentless struggle against,
those bourgeois distortions of socialism that have gained
the upper hand in the top echelons of the vast majority of
official “Social-Democratic” and “socialist” parties.
(17) One such distortion, on the one hand, is the trend
of opportunism and social-chauvinism, socialism in words
but chauvinism in deeds, the concealment of the defence
of the predatory interests of one’s “own” national bourgeoisie behind the slogan of “defence of the fatherland”, both
in general and during the imperialist war of 1914-18 in
particular. This trend has come into being because in nearly
all the advanced countries, the bourgeoisie, by plundering
the colonial and weak nations, has been able to bribe the
upper stratum of the proletariat with crumbs from the
superprofits, to ensure them in peace-time a tolerable, pettybourgeois existence, and to take the leaders of that stratum
into its service. The opportunists and social-chauvinists,
being servants of the bourgeoisie, are real class enemies of
the proletariat.
(18) Another bourgeois distortion of socialism is, on the
other hand, the “Centrist” trend, which is equally broad
and international, which wavers between the social-chauvinists and the Communists, advocates unity with the former
and is attempting to resuscitate the bankrupt and putrid
Second International. The only really proletarian and revolutionary International is the new, Third, Communist
International, that has actually been founded by the formation of Communist Parties out of the former socialist
parties in a number of countries, particularly in Germany,
and is gaining the growing sympathy of the proletarian
masses in all countries.
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
*
*
105
*
THE BASIC TASKS OF THE DICTATORSHIP
OF THE PROLETARIAT IN RUSSIA
In Russia today the basic tasks of the dictatorship of the
proletariat are to carry through to the end, to complete,
the expropriation of the landowners and bourgeoisie that
has already begun, and the transfer of all factories, railways,
banks, the merchant fleet and other means of production
and exchange to ownership by the Soviet Republic;
to employ the alliance of urban workers and poor peasants,
which has already led to the abolition of private ownership
of land, and the law on the transitional form between smallpeasant farming and socialism, which modern ideologists
of the peasantry that has put itself on the side of the proletarians have called socialisation of the land, for a gradual
but steady transition to joint tillage and large-scale socialist agriculture;
to strengthen and further develop the Federative Republic
of Soviets as an immeasurably higher and more progressive
form of democracy than bourgeois parliamentarism, and as
the sole type of state corresponding, on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 and equally of the
experience of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 - 18,
to the transitional period between capitalism and socialism,
i.e., to the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat;
by employing in every way the torch of world socialist
revolution lit in Russia to paralyse the attempts of the imperialist bourgeois states to intervene in the internal affairs
of Russia or to unite for direct struggle and war against
the socialist Soviet Republic and to carry the revolution
into the most advanced countries and in general into all coun-
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V. I. L E N I N
tries; by a number of gradual but undeviating measures
to abolish private trading completely and to organise the
regular, planned exchange of products between producers’
and consumers’ communes to form the single economic entity
the Soviet Republic must become.
The Russian Communist Party, developing the general
tasks of the Soviet government in greater detail, at present
formulates them as follows.
In the Political Sphere
Prior to the capture of political power by the proletariat
it was (obligatory) necessary to make use of bourgeois democracy, parliamentarism in particular, for the political education and organisation of the working masses; now that
the proletariat has won political power and a higher type
of democracy is being put into effect in the Soviet Republic,
any step backward to bourgeois parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy would undoubtedly be reactionary service
to the interests of the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists. Such catchwords as supposedly popular, national,
general, extra-class but actually bourgeois democracy serve
the interests of the exploiters alone, and as long as the land
and other means of production remain private property
the most democratic republic must inevitably remain a
bourgeois dictatorship, a machine for the suppression of the
overwhelming majority of working people by a handful of
capitalists.
The historical task that has fallen to the lot of the Soviet
Republic, a new type of state that is transitional until
the state disappears altogether, is the following.
(1) The creation and development of universal mass organisations of precisely those classes that are oppressed under
capitalism—the proletariat and semi-proletariat. A bourgeois-democratic republic at best permits the organisation of
the exploited masses, by declaring them free to organise,
but actually has always placed countless obstacles in the
way of their organisation, obstacles that were connected
with the private ownership of the means of production in a
way that made them irremovable. For the first time in
history, Soviet power has not only greatly facilitated the
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107
organisation of the masses who were oppressed under
capitalism, but has made that organisation the essential
permanent basis of the entire state apparatus, local and
central, from top to bottom. Only in this way is it possible
to ensure democracy for the great majority of the population (the working people), i.e., actual participation in state
administration, in contrast to the actual administration
of the state mainly by members of the bourgeois classes as
is the case in the most democratic bourgeois republics.
(2) The Soviet system of state administration gives a
certain actual advantage to that section of the working
people that all the capitalist development that preceded
socialism has made the most concentrated, united, educated
and steeled in the struggle, i.e, to the urban industrial
proletariat. This advantage must be used systematically
and unswervingly to counteract the narrow guild and narrow
trade interests that capitalism fostered among the workers
and which split them into competitive groups, by uniting
the most backward and disunited masses of rural proletarians and semi-proletarians more closely with the advanced
workers, by snatching them away from the influence of the
village kulaks and village bourgeoisie, and organising and
educating them for communist development.
(3) Bourgeois democracy that solemnly announced the
equality of all citizens, in actual fact hypocritically concealed the domination of the capitalist exploiters and deceived
the masses with the idea that the equality of exploiters
and exploited is possible. The Soviet organisation of the
state destroys this deception and this hypocrisy by the
implementation of real democracy, i.e., the real equality
of all working people, and by excluding the exploiters from
the category of members of society possessing full rights.
The experience of world history, the experience of all
revolts of the exploited classes against their exploiters shows
the inevitability of long and desperate resistance of the
exploiters in their struggle to retain their privileges. Soviet
state organisation is adapted to the suppression of that
resistance, for unless it is suppressed there can be no question of a victorious communist revolution.
(4) The more direct influence of the working masses on
state structure and administration—i.e., a higher form of
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V. I. L E N I N
democracy—is also effected under the Soviet type of state,
first, by-the electoral procedure and the possibility of holding elections more frequently, and also by conditions for
re-election and for the recall of deputies which are simpler
and more comprehensible to the urban and rural workers
than is the case under the best forms of bourgeois democracy;
(5) secondly, by making the economic, industrial unit
(factory) and not a territorial division the primary electoral
unit and the nucleus of the state structure under Soviet
power. This closer contact between the state apparatus and
the masses of advanced proletarians that capitalism has
united, in addition to effecting a higher level of democracy,
also makes it possible to effect profound socialist reforms.
(6) Soviet organisation has made possible the creation
of armed forces of workers and peasants which are much more
closely connected with the working and exploited people
than before. If this had not been done it would have been
impossible to achieve one of the basic conditions for the
victory of socialism—the arming of the workers and the
disarming of the bourgeoisie.
(7) Soviet organisation has developed incomparably farther and deeper that feature of bourgeois democracy which
marks historically its great progressive nature as compared
with medieval times, i.e., the participation of the people
in the election of individuals to office. In none of the most
democratic bourgeois states have the working masses ever
been able to enjoy the electoral rights formally granted
them by the bourgeoisie (who actually hinder their enjoyment)
anywhere near as extensively, frequently, universally,
easily and simply as they are enjoyed under Soviet power.
Soviet power has, at the same time, swept away those negative aspects of bourgeois democracy that the Paris Commune
began to abolish, i.e., parliamentarism, or the separation
of legislative and executive powers, the narrow, limited
nature of which Marxism has long since indicated. By merging the two aspects of government the Soviets bring the
state apparatus closer to the working people and remove the
fence of the bourgeois parliament that fooled the masses
with hypocritical signboards concealing the financial and
stock-exchange deals of parliamentary businessmen and
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
109
ensured the inviolability of the bourgeois apparatus of state
administration.
(8) Soviet state organisation alone has enabled the proletarian revolution to smash the old bourgeois state apparatus
at one blow and destroy it to the very foundations; had this
not been done no start could have been made on socialist
development. Those strongholds of the bureaucracy which
everywhere, both under monarchies and in the most democratic bourgeois republics, has always kept the state bound
to the interests of the landowners and capitalists, have been
destroyed in present-day Russia. The struggle against the
bureaucracy, however, is certainly not over in our country.
The bureaucracy is trying to regain some of its positions
and is taking advantage, on the one hand, of the unsatisfactory cultural level of the masses of the people and, on
the other, of the tremendous, almost superhuman war efforts
of the most developed section of the urban workers. The
continuation of the struggle against the bureaucracy, therefore, is absolutely necessary, is imperative, to ensure the
success of future socialist development.
(9) Work in this field is closely connected with the
implementation of the chief historical purpose of Soviet
power, i.e., to advance towards the final abolition of the
state, and should consist of the following. First, every member
of a Soviet must, without fail, do a certain job of state administration; secondly, these jobs must be consistently changed
so that they embrace all aspects of government, all its
branches; and, thirdly, literally all the working population
must be drawn into independent participation in state
administration by means of a series of gradual measures
that are carefully selected and unfailingly implemented.
(10) By and large, the difference between bourgeois democracy and parliamentarism on the one hand, and Soviet
or proletarian democracy on the other, boils down to this:
the centre of gravity of the former is in its solemn and pompous declarations of numerous liberties and rights which the
majority of the population, the workers and peasants, cannot enjoy to the full. Proletarian, or Soviet, democracy, on
the contrary, has transferred the centre of gravity away
from the declaration of rights and liberties for the entire
people to the actual participation of none but the working
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V. I. L E N I N
people, who were oppressed and exploited by capital, in the
administration of the state, the actual use of the best buildings and other premises for meetings and congresses, the
best printing-works and the biggest warehouses (stocks)
of paper for the education of those who were stultified and
downtrodden under capitalism, and to providing a real
(actual) opportunity for those masses gradually to free themselves from the burden of religious prejudices, etc., etc.
It is precisely in making the benefits of culture, civilisation
and democracy really available to the working and exploited
people that Soviet power sees its most important work,
work which it must continue unswervingly in the future.
The policy of the R.C.P. on the national question, unlike
the bourgeois-democratic declaration of the equality of
nations, which cannot be implemented under imperialism, is
that of steadily drawing together and merging the proletarians and the working masses of all nations in their revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. Among
the working people of the nations that entered into the
Russian Empire the mistrust of the Great Russians that has
been inherited from the epoch of tsarist and bourgeois GreatRussian imperialism is rapidly vanishing, under the influence of their acquaintance with Soviet Russia, but that
mistrust has not yet completely disappeared among all
nations and among all sections of the working people. It is,
therefore, necessary to exercise special caution in respect
of national feelings and to ensure the pursuance of a policy
of actual equality and freedom to secede so as to remove the
grounds for this mistrust and achieve the close voluntary
union of the Soviet republics of all nations. Aid to backward
and weak nations must be increased by assisting the independent organisation and education of the workers and
peasants of all nations in the struggle against medieval and
bourgeois oppression and also by assisting in the development of the language and literature of nations that have
been oppressed or have been underprivileged.
In respect of the policy on religion the task of the (R.C.P.)
dictatorship of the proletariat must not be confined to decreeing the separation of the church from the state and the
school from the church, that is, to measures promised by
bourgeois democrats but never fully carried out anywhere in
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
111
the world because of the many and varied connections actually existing between capital and religious propaganda.
The proletarian dictatorship must completely destroy the
connection between the exploiting classes—the landowners
and capitalists—and the organisation of religious propaganda
as something which keeps the masses in ignorance. The
proletarian dictatorship must consistently effect the real
emancipation of the working people from religious prejudices,
doing so by means of propaganda and by raising the
political consciousness of the masses but carefully avoiding
anything that may hurt the feelings of the religious section
of the population and serve to increase religious fanaticism.
In the sphere of public education, the object of the R.C.P.
is to complete the work that began with the October Revolution in 1917 to convert the school from an instrument
of the class rule of the bourgeoisie into an instrument for
the overthrow of that rule and for the complete abolition
of the division of society into classes.
In the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e.,
in the period in which conditions are being prepared for the
full realisation of communism, the school must be the
vehicle, not merely of the general principles of communism
but also of the ideological, organisational and educational
influence of the proletariat on-the semi-proletarian and nonproletarian sections of the working people, in order to train
a generation that is fully capable of building communism.
The immediate tasks in this field are, for the present,
the following.
(1) The implementation of free, obligatory general and
polytechnical education (acquaintance with all the main
branches of production theoretically and in practice) for
all children of both sexes up to the age of 16.
(2) The closest connection between schooling and productive social labour.
(3) The provision of food, clothing, books and other
teaching aids for all school children at the expense of the
state.
(4) Greater agitation and propaganda among schoolteachers.
(5) The training of new teaching staffs imbued with communist ideas.
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V. I. L E N I N
(6) The working people must be drawn into active participation in the work of education (the development of the
public education councils, mobilisation of the educated,
etc.).
(7) All-round help on the part of Soviet power in the matter
of the self-education and self-development of workers and
working peasants (organisation of libraries, schools for
adults, people’s universities, courses of lectures, cinemas,
studios, etc.).
(8) Development of the most extensive propaganda of
communist ideas.
The Russian Communist Party, developing the general
tasks of the Soviet government in greater detail, at present
formulates them as follows.
In the Economic Sphere
The present tasks of Soviet power are:
(1) To continue steadily and finish the expropriation of
the bourgeoisie and the conversion of the means of production and distribution into the property of the Soviet Republic, i.e., into the common property of all working people,
which has in the main been completed.
(2) To pay particularly great attention to the development and strengthening of comradely discipline among
the working people and to stimulate their initiative and
sense of responsibility in every field. This is the most
important if not the sole means of completely overcoming
capitalism and the habits formed by the rule of the private
ownership of the means of production. This aim can be
achieved only by slow, persistent work to re-educate the
masses; this re-education has not only become possible now
that the masses have seen that the landowner, capitalist
and merchant have really been eliminated, but is actually
taking place in thousands of ways through the practical
experience of the workers and peasants themselves. It is
extremely important in this respect to work for the further
organisation of the working people in trade unions; never
before has this organisation developed as rapidly anywhere in the world as under Soviet power, and it must be
developed until literally all working people are organised
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113
in properly constituted, centralised and disciplined trade
unions. We must not confine ourselves to the old, stereotyped
forms of the trade union movement, but must, on the one
hand, systematically convert the trade unions into organs
administering the economy, carefully checking every step we
take against the results of practical work; there must be
greater and stronger bonds between the trade unions and the
Supreme Economic Council, the Commissariat of Labour
and, later, with all other branches of the state administration; on the other hand, the trade unions must to a greater
degree become organs for the labour and socialist education of the working masses as a whole so that the practical
experience of participation in the administration spreads
to the more backward sections of the workers, under the
control of the vanguard of the workers.
(3) One of the basic tasks is to raise the level of labour
productivity, for without this the full transition to communism is impossible. In addition to lengthy work to educate
the masses and raise their cultural level, the achievement
of this goal requires the immediate, extensive and comprehensive employment in science and technology of those
specialists who have been left us as our heritage from capitalism and, as a rule, are imbued with the bourgeois world
outlook and habits. The Party, in close alliance with the
trade union organisations, must continue its former line
—on the one hand, there must not be the slightest political concession to this bourgeois section of the population,
and any counter-revolutionary attempts on its part must
be ruthlessly suppressed, and, on the other hand, there must
be a relentless struggle against the pseudo-radical but
actually ignorant and conceited opinion that the working
people are capable of overcoming capitalism and the bourgeois social system without learning from bourgeois specialists, without making use of their services and without
undergoing the training of a lengthy period of work side
by side with them.
Although our ultimate aim is to achieve full communism
and equal remuneration for all kinds of work, we cannot
introduce this equality straightaway, at the present time,
when only the first steps of the transition from capitalism
to communism are being taken. For a certain period of time,
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V. I. L E N I N
therefore, we must retain the present higher remuneration
for specialists in order to give them an incentive to work
no worse, and even better, than they have worked before;
and with the same object in view we must not reject the
system of paying bonuses for the most successful work,
particularly organisational work; bonuses would be impermissible under a full communist system but in the period
of transition from capitalism to communism bonuses are
indispensable, as is borne out by theory and by a year’s
experience of Soviet power.
We must, furthermore, work consistently to surround the
bourgeois specialists with a comradely atmosphere created
by working hand in hand with the masses of rank-and-file
workers led by politically-conscious Communists; we must
not be dismayed by the inevitable individual failures but
must strive patiently to arouse in people possessing scientific knowledge a consciousness of how loathsome it is to
use science for personal enrichment and for the exploitation
of man by man, a consciousness of the more lofty aim of
using science for the purpose of making it known to the
working people.
(4) The building of communism undoubtedly requires
the greatest possible and most strict centralisation of labour
on a nation-wide scale, and this presumes overcoming the
scattering and disunity of workers, by trades and locally,
which was one of the sources of capital’s strength and
labour’s weakness. The struggle against the narrowness and
limitations of the guild and against its egoism is closely
connected with the struggle to remove the antithesis between
town and country; it presents great difficulties and cannot be begun on a broad scale without first achieving a
considerable increase in the productivity of the people’s
labour. A start on this work must, however, be made immediately, if at first only on a small, local scale and by way
of experiment for the purpose of comparing the results
of various measures undertaken in different trades and in
different places. The mobilisation of the entire able-bodied
population by the Soviet government, with the trade unions
participating, for certain public works must be much more
widely and systematically practised than has hitherto been
the case.
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115
(5) In the sphere of distribution, the present task of
Soviet power is to continue steadily replacing trade by the
planned, organised and nation-wide distribution of goods.
The goal is the organisation of the entire population in
producers’ and consumers’ communes that can distribute
all essential products most rapidly, systematically, economically and with the least expenditure of labour by strictly
centralising the entire distribution machinery. The cooperatives are a transitional means of achieving this aim. The
use of them is similar to the use of bourgeois specialists
insofar as the co-operative machinery we have inherited
from capitalism is in the hands of people whose thinking and business habits are bourgeois. The R.C.P. must
systematically pursue the policy of making it obligatory
for all members of the Party to work in the co-operatives
and, with the aid of the trade unions, direct them in a communist spirit, develop the initiative and discipline of the
working people who belong to them, endeavour to get the
entire population to join them, and the co-operatives themselves to merge into one single co-operative that embraces
the whole of the Soviet Republic. Lastly, and most important, the dominating influence of the proletariat over the
rest of the working people must be constantly maintained,
and everywhere the most varied measures must be tried
with a view to facilitating and bringing about the transition
from petty-bourgeois co-operatives of the old capitalist
type to producers’ and consumers’ communes led by proletarians and semi-proletarians.
(6) It is impossible to abolish money at one stroke in
the first period of transition from capitalism to communism.
As a consequence the bourgeois elements of the population
continue to use privately-owned currency notes—these tokens by which the exploiters obtain the right to receive
public wealth—for the purpose of speculation, profit-making
and robbing the working population. The nationalisation
of the banks is insufficient in itself to combat this survival
of bourgeois robbery. The R.C.P. will strive as speedily
as possible to introduce the most radical measures to pave
the way for the abolition of money, first and foremost to
replace it by savings-bank books, cheques, short-term notes
entitling the holders to receive goods from the public
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V. I. L E N I N
stores, and so forth, to make it compulsory for money to be
deposited in the banks, etc. Practical experience in paving
the way for, and carrying out, these and similar measures
will show which of them are the most expedient.
(7) In the sphere of finance, the R.C.P. will introduce
a graduated income-and-property tax in all cases where it
is feasible. But these cases cannot be numerous since private
property in land, the majority of factories and other
enterprises has been abolished. In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the state ownership of the
principal means of production, the state finances must be
based on the direct appropriation of a certain part of the
revenue from the different state monopolies to meet the
needs of the state. Revenue and expenditure can be balanced
only if the exchange of commodities is properly organised,
and this will be achieved by the organisation of producers’
and consumers’ communes and the restoration of the transport system, which is one of the major immediate objects
of the Soviet government.
In the Sphere of Agriculture
After the abolition of private property in land and the
[almost] complete expropriation of the landowners and
the promulgation of a law on the socialisation of the land
which regards as preferable the large-scale farming of commonly-owned estates, the chief task of Soviet power is to
discover and test in practice the most expedient and practical transitional measures to effect this.
The main line and the guiding principle of the R.C.P.
agrarian policy under these circumstances still remains the
effort to rely on the proletarian and semi-proletarian
elements of the countryside. They must first and foremost
be organised into an independent force, they must be brought
closer to the urban proletariat and wrested from the influence of the rural bourgeoisie and petty-property interests. The organisation of Poor Peasants’ Committees was
one step in this direction; the organisation of Party cells
in the villages, the re-election of Soviet deputies to exclude
the kulaks, the establishment of special types of trade unions
for the proletarians and semi-proletarians of the country-
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
117
side—all these and similar measures must be effected without
fail.
As far as the kulaks, the rural bourgeoisie, are concerned,
the policy of the R.C.P. is one of decisive struggle against
their attempts at exploitation and the suppression of their
resistance to Soviet socialist policy.
As far as the middle peasant is concerned, the policy of
the R.C.P. is one of a cautious attitude towards him; he must
not be confused with the kulak and coercive measures must
not be used against him; by his class position the middle
peasant can be the ally of the proletarian government during
the transition to socialism, or, at least, he can remain a
neutral element. Despite the unavoidable partial failures
and waverings of the middle peasant, therefore, we must
strive persistently to reach agreement with him, showing
a solicitous attitude to all his desires and making concessions in selecting ways of carrying out socialist reforms. In
this respect a prominent place must be given to the struggle
against the abuses of those representatives of Soviet power
who, hypocritically taking advantage of the title of Communist, are carrying out a policy that is not communist but
is a policy of the bureaucracy, of officialdom; such people
must be ruthlessly banished and a stricter control established with the aid of the trade unions and by other means.
Insofar as concerns measures for the transition to communist farming, the R.C.P. will test in practice three principal measures that have already taken shape—state farms,
agricultural communes and societies (and co-operatives)
for the collective tilling of the soil, care being taken to
ensure their more extensive and more correct application,
especially in respect of ways of developing the voluntary
participation of the peasants in these new forms of cooperative farming and of the organisation of the working
peasantry to carry out control from below and ensure
comradely discipline.
The R.C.P. food policy upholds the consolidation and
development of the state monopoly, and does not reject the
use of co-operatives and private traders or the employees
of trading firms, or the application of a system of bonuses,
on the condition that it is controlled by Soviet power and
serves the purpose of the better organisation of the business.
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V. I. L E N I N
The partial concessions that have to be made from time to
time are only due to the extreme acuteness of need and never
imply a refusal to strive persistently to implement the state
monopoly. It is very difficult to implement it in a country
of small peasant farms, it requires lengthy work and the
practical testing of a number of transitional measures that
lead to the goal by various ways, i.e., that lead to the universal organisation and correct functioning of producers
and consumers’ communes that hand over all food surpluses
to the state.
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
119
2
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P. (BOLSHEVIKS)
(1) The Revolution of October 25 (November 7), 1917
established the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia
which began, with the support of the poor peasantry or semiproletariat, to lay the foundations of a communist society.
The growth of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in all advanced countries, the universal emergence
and development of the Soviet form of that movement, i.e.,
a form which aims directly at the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and, lastly, the beginning and
progress of the revolution in Austria-Hungary and, particularly, in Germany, all goes to show vividly that the era
of the world proletarian, communist revolution has begun.
(2) The causes, significance and aims of this revolution
can be correctly understood only by making clear the real
nature of capitalism and the inevitability of its development towards communism through imperialism and the
imperialist wars that are accelerating the collapse of capitalism.
*
*
*
(3) The nature of capitalism and of the bourgeois society
which still dominates in most civilised countries and the
development of which inevitably leads to the world communist revolution of the proletariat was correctly described
in our old Programme (if we disregard the inaccurate name
of Social-Democratic Party) in the following terms.
(4) “The principal specific feature of this society is commodity production based on capitalist production relations,
under which the most important and major part of the
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V. I. L E N I N
means of production and exchange of commodities belongs
to a numerically small class of persons while the vast majority of the population is made up of proletarians and semiproletarians, who, owing to their economic position, are
compelled permanently or periodically to sell their labourpower, i.e., to hire themselves out to the capitalists and
to create by their labour the incomes of the upper classes
of society.
(5) “The ascendancy of capitalist production relations
extends its area more and more with the steady improvement
of technology, which, by enhancing the economic importance
of the large enterprises, tends to eliminate the small independent producers, converting some of them into proletarians and narrowing the role of others in the social and economic sphere, and in some places making them more or
less completely, more or less obviously, more or less painfully dependent on capital.
(6) “Moreover, this technical progress enables the employers to make growing use of female and child labour in
the process of production and exchange of commodities.
And since, on the other hand; it causes a relative decrease
in the employers’ demand for human labour-power, the
demand for labour-power necessarily lags behind its supply,
as a result of which the dependence of wage-labour on capital is increased and exploitation of labour rises to a higher
level.
(7) “This state of affairs in the bourgeois countries and
the steadily growing competition among them in the world
market make it more and more difficult for them to sell
the goods which are produced in ever-increasing quantities.
Over-production, manifesting itself in more or less acute
industrial crises followed by more or less protracted periods
of industrial stagnation, is an inevitable consequence of the
development of the productive forces in bourgeois society.
Crises and periods of industrial stagnation, in their turn,
still further ruin the small producers, still further increase
the dependence of wage-labour on capital, and lead still
more rapidly to the relative and sometimes to the absolute
deterioration of the condition of the working class.
(8) “Thus, improvement in technology, signifying increased
labour productivity and greater social wealth, becomes in
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
121
bourgeois society the cause of greater social inequality, of
widening gulfs between the rich and poor, of greater insecurity, unemployment, and various hardships of the mass
of the working people.
(9) “However, in proportion as all these contradictions,
which are inherent in bourgeois society, grow and develop,
so also does the discontent of the toiling and exploited masses
with the existing order of things grow; the numerical
strength and solidarity of the proletarians increase and
their struggle against their exploiters is sharpened. At the
same time, by concentrating the means of production and
exchange and socialising the process of labour in capitalist
enterprises, the improvement in technology more and more
rapidly creates the material possibility of capitalist production relations being superseded by communist relations,
i.e., the possibility of bringing about the social revolution,
which is the ultimate aim of all the activities of the international communist party as the conscious exponent of
the class movement of the proletariat.
(10) “By introducing social in place of private ownership
of the means of production and exchange, by introducing
planned organisation of social production to ensure the
well-being and many-sided development of all the members
of society, the proletarian social revolution will do away
with the division of society into classes and thereby emancipate the whole of oppressed humanity, for it will put an
end to all forms of exploitation of one section of society by
another.
(11) “A necessary condition for this social revolution
is the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the conquest
by the proletariat of such political power as will enable it
to suppress all resistance on the part of the exploiters.
Aiming at making the proletariat capable of fulfilling its
great historic mission, the international communist party
organises the proletariat in an independent political party
opposed to all the bourgeois parties, guides all the manifestations of its class struggle, reveals to it the irreconcilable
antagonism between the interests of the exploiters and those
of the exploited, and explains to the proletariat the historical significance of and the necessary conditions for the
impending social revolution. At the same time it reveals
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V. I. L E N I N
to all the other toiling and exploited masses the hopelessness
of their position in capitalist society and the need for a
social revolution if they are to free themselves from the
yoke of capital. The Communist Party, the party of the
working class, calls upon all sections of the working and
exploited population to join its ranks insofar as they adopt
the standpoint of the proletariat.”
*
*
*
(12) The concentration and centralisation of capital which
destroys free competition, had, by the turn of the twentieth
century, created powerful monopoly associations of capitalists—syndicates, cartels and trusts—that became of decisive importance in all economic life, had led to the merging
of bank capital and highly concentrated industrial capital,
to the increased export of capital to other countries and to
the stage which marked the beginning of the economic division of the world among the trusts that embrace evergrowing groups of capitalist powers when it had already
been divided territorially between the richest countries.
This epoch of finance capital, the epoch of a struggle
between capitalist states unparalleled in its ferocity, is the
epoch of imperialism.
(13) The inevitable outcome of this is imperialist wars,
wars for markets, spheres of investment, raw materials
and cheap labour-power, i.e., for world domination and the
crushing of small and weak peoples. The first great imperialist war of 1914-18 was a war of this type.
(14) The extremely high level of development which world
capitalism in general has attained, the replacement of free
competition by state monopoly capitalism, the fact that the
banks and the capitalist associations have prepared the
machinery for the social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products, the rise in the cost of
living and increased oppression of the working class by
the syndicates and its enslavement by the imperialist
state due to the growth of capitalist monopolies, the
tremendous obstacles standing in the way of the proletariat’s economic and political struggle, the horrors, misery,
ruin, and brutalisation caused by the imperialist war—all
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
123
these factors transform the present stage of capitalist development into an era of proletarian communist revolution.
That era has dawned.
(15) Only a proletarian communist revolution can lead humanity out of the impasse which imperialism and imperialist wars have created. Whatever difficulties the revolution
may have to encounter, whatever possible temporary setbacks or waves of counter-revolution it may have to contend with, the final victory of the proletariat is inevitable.
*
*
FROM MARX
TO MAO
*
(16) The victory of the world proletarian revolution calls
for the complete confidence, the closest fraternal alliance
and the greatest possible unity of revolutionary action on
the part of the working class of the advanced countries.
These conditions cannot be created without a determined,
principled rupture with, and a relentless struggle against,
those bourgeois distortions of socialism that have gained
the upper hand in the top echelons of the official “SocialDemocratic” and “socialist” parties.
(17) One such distortion, on the one hand, is the trend
of opportunism and social-chauvinism, socialism in words
but chauvinism in deeds, the concealment of the defence
of the predatory interests of one’s “own” national bourgeoisie behind the false slogan of “defence of the fatherland”,
both in general and during the imperialist war of 1914-18
in particular. This trend has come into being because in
the advanced capitalist states, the bourgeoisie, by plundering the colonial and weak nations, has been able to bribe
the upper stratum of the proletariat with crumbs from the
superprofits obtained from this plunder and ensure them in
peace-time a tolerable, petty-bourgeois existence, and to
take the leaders of that stratum into its service. The opportunists and social-chauvinists, being servants of the bourgeoisie, are real class enemies of the proletariat, especially
today, when, in alliance with the capitalists, they are crushing the proletarian revolutionary movement with a mailed
fist, both in their own and in other countries.
(18) Another bourgeois distortion of socialism is, on the
other hand, the “Centrist” trend, also to be found in all
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COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
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V. I. L E N I N
capitalist countries, which wavers between the social-chauvinists and the Communists, advocates unity with the former
and is attempting to resuscitate the bankrupt Second International. The only leader of the proletariat in its struggle
for emancipation is the new, Third, Communist International that has actually been founded by the formation of
Communist Parties from the truly proletarian elements of
the former socialist parties in a number of countries, particularly in Germany, and is gaining the growing sympathy
of the proletarian masses in all countries. This International is returning to Marxism, not only in its name, but in
all its political and ideological content, and in all its activities is implementing the revolutionary doctrine of Marx,
cleansed of bourgeois opportunist distortions.
Pravda No. 4 3 ,
February 2 5 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
a typewritten copy
corrected by Lenin
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
125
3
INSERTION FOR POLITICAL SECTION
OF THE PROGRAMME
To avoid making an incorrect generalisation of transient
historical needs the R.C.P. must also explain to the working
people that in the Soviet Republic the disfranchisement of
a section of the citizens does not mean, as was the case in
the majority of bourgeois-democratic republics, that a
definite category of citizens are disfranchised for life. It
applies only to the exploiters, to those who, in violation of
the fundamental laws of the socialist Soviet Republic,
persist in their efforts to cling to their exploiters’ status
and to preserve capitalist relations. Consequently, in the
Soviet Republic, on the one hand, as socialism grows daily
stronger and the number of those who are objectively able
to remain exploiters or preserve capitalist relations is
reduced, the number of disfranchised persons will automatically diminish. Even now the disfranchised persons
in Russia constitute barely two or three per cent of the
population. On the other hand, in the very near future,
the cessation of foreign invasion and the completion of
the expropriation of the expropriators may, under certain
circumstances, create a situation where the proletarian state
will choose other methods of suppressing the resistance of
the exploiters and will introduce unrestricted universal
suffrage.
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V. I. L E N I N
4
FRAGMENT OF THE POLITICAL SECTION
OF THE PROGRAMME
The Soviet Constitution ensures the working people immeasurably larger opportunities than are provided by bourgeois democracy and parliamentarism to elect and recall
deputies in a way that is most easy and accessible for
workers and peasants; it also eliminates the negative aspects
of parliamentarism which have been evident since the
Paris Commune, particularly the division of legislative
and executive power, the alienation of parliament from the
masses, and so forth.
The Soviet Constitution also brings the machinery of
state closer to the masses by making the electoral constituency and the basic unit of the state not territorial but
industrial units (the factory, etc.).
The closer contact between the machinery of state and
the masses under the Soviet system makes it possible to
create... 20
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
127
5
SECTION OF THE PROGRAMME
ON NATIONAL RELATIONS
On the national question, the policy of the proletariat
which has captured political power—unlike that of the
bourgeois-democratic formal proclamation of equality of
nations, which is impossible under imperialism—is persistently to bring about the real rapprochement and amalgamation of the workers and peasants of all nations in their revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. To
achieve this object, the colonial and other nations which
are oppressed, or whose rights are restricted, must be completely liberated and granted the right to secede as a guarantee
that the sentiment inherited from capitalism, the distrust
of the working people of the various nations and the wrath
which the workers of the oppressed nations feel towards
the workers of the oppressor nations, will be fully dispelled
and replaced by a conscious and voluntary alliance.
The workers of those nations which under capitalism were
oppressor nations must take exceptional care not to hurt
the national sentiments of the oppressed nations (for example,
the attitude of the Great Russians, Ukrainians and Poles
towards the Jews, the attitude of the Tatars towards the
Bashkirs, and so forth) and must not only promote the actual
equality, but also the development of the language and
literature of the working people of the formerly oppressed
nations so as to remove all traces of distrust and alienation
inherited from the epoch of capitalism.
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V. I. L E N I N
6
INSERTION FOR THE FINAL DRAFT
OF THE PROGRAMME SECTION
ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION
On the question of who expresses the will of the nation
on the matter of secession, the R.C.P. upholds the historical class view and takes into consideration the level of historical development of the nation concerned—on the way
from the Middle Ages to bourgeois democracy, or from bourgeois to Soviet or proletarian democracy, etc. In any case,
on the part of... 21
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
129
7
PREAMBLE TO THE MILITARY SECTION
OF THE PROGRAMME
The state of affairs in the sphere of the military tasks and
military activities of the Soviet Republic under the dictatorship of the proletariat is as follows.
As our Party long ago foresaw, the imperialist war could
not end even with the simple conclusion of a durable peace
between the bourgeois governments, let alone with a just
peace. This petty-bourgeois illusion entertained by democrats, socialists and Social-Democrats has been fully dispelled by the course of events. The imperialist war inevitably
had to be transformed, and is being transformed before
our very eyes, into the civil war of the exploited working
people, headed by the proletariat, against the exploiters,
against the bourgeoisie.
The resistance of the exploiters, which grows simultaneously with the intensification of the onslaught of the proletariat, and is particularly intensified by the victory of the
proletariat in individual countries, and the international
solidarity and organisation of the bourgeoisie inevitably
cause the combination of civil war in individual countries
and revolutionary wars between the proletarian countries
and bourgeois countries fighting to retain the rule of capital. In view of the class character of such wars, the distinction drawn between defensive and offensive wars becomes
utterly meaningless.
By and large, this development of international civil war, a
process which has been taking place with exceptional
rapidity before our very eyes since the end of 1918 is the
legitimate product of the class struggle under capitalism
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V. I. L E N I N
and a legitimate step towards the victory of the international proletarian revolution.
For this reason, the R.C.P. emphatically rejects the hope
of disarmament under capitalism as the reactionary philistine illusion of petty-bourgeois democrats, even though
they call themselves socialists and Social-Democrats, and
in opposition to this and all similar slogans which actually
play into the hands of the bourgeoisie, it advances the slogan of arming the proletariat and disarming the bourgeoisie, the slogan of completely and ruthlessly suppressing the
resistance of the exploiters, the slogan of fighting until
victory over the bourgeoisie of the whole world is achieved
both in civil wars at home and in international revolutionary wars.
The practical experience of more than a year’s military
activity and of the formation of a proletarian revolutionary
army after the incredible weariness and exhaustion of the
entire mass of working people as a result of the war, has
led the R.C.P. to the following main conclusions:
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
131
8
FIRST PARAGRAPH OF SECTION
OF THE PROGRAMME ON THE COURTS
On the road to communism through the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the Communist Party, rejecting democratic
slogans, completely abolishes also such organs of bourgeois
rule as the old courts, and replaces them by the class courts
of the workers and peasants. After taking all power into
its hands, the proletariat puts forward, instead of the old
vague formula, “Election of judges by the people”, the class
slogan, “Election of judges from the working people by none
but the working people”, and carries it into practice
throughout the judicial system. In the election of judges from
none but workers and peasants who do not employ wagelabour for profit, the Communist Party makes no distinction
with regard to women but allows the two sexes completely
equal rights both in electing judges and in exercising judicial functions. Having repealed the laws of the deposed
governments, the Party gives the judges elected by Soviet
electors the slogan: enforce the will of the proletariat, apply
its decrees, and in the absence of a suitable decree, or if
the relevant decree is inadequate, take guidance from your
socialist sense of justice, ignoring the laws of the deposed
governments.
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V. I. L E N I N
9
SECTION OF THE PROGRAMME
DEALING WITH PUBLIC EDUCATION
In the sphere of public education, the object of the R.C.P.
is to complete the work that began with the October Revolution in 1917 to convert the school from an instrument of
the class rule of the bourgeoisie into an instrument for the
overthrow of that rule and for the complete abolition of
the division of society into classes. The schools must become
an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e.,
a vehicle not merely of the general principles of communism
but also of the ideological, organisational and educational
influence of the proletariat on the semi-proletarian and
non-proletarian sections of the working people with the
object of completely suppressing the resistance of the exploiters and of building the communist system. The immediate
tasks in this field are, for the present, the following:
(1) the further development of the initiative of the
workers and working peasants in the sphere of education
with the all-round assistance of the Soviet government;
(2) securing complete command not only over a section,
or the majority, of the school-teachers, as is the case at
present, but over all school-teachers by weeding out the
incorrigible bourgeois counter-revolutionary elements and
securing the conscientious application of communist principles; (policy)
(3) the implementation of free, obligatory general and
polytechnical education (acquaintance with all the main
branches of production theoretically and in practice) for
all children of both sexes up to the age of 16;
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
133
(4) the closest connection between schooling and productive social labour of the child;
(5) the provision of food, clothing, books and other teaching aids for all school children at the expense of the state;
(6) the working people must be drawn into active participation in the work of public education (the development
of the public education councils, mobilisation of the educated, etc.);
or ad 2) (7) to secure the closest contact between schoolteachers and the agitation and propaganda machinery of the
R.C.P.
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V. I. L E N I N
10
SECTION OF THE PROGRAMME
DEALING WITH RELIGION
As regards religion, the policy of the R.C.P. is not to be
confined to decreeing the separation of the church from the
state and the school from the church, that is, to measures
promised by bourgeois democrats but never fully carried
out anywhere in the world because of the many and varied
connections actually existing between capital and religious
propaganda.
The Party’s object is to completely destroy the connection
between the exploiting classes and organised religious propaganda and really liberate the working people from religious prejudices. For this purpose it must organise the most
widespread scientific education and anti-religious propaganda. It is necessary, however, to take care to avoid hurting
the religious sentiments of believers, for this only serves
to increase religious fanaticism.
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
135
11
POINTS FROM THE ECONOMIC SECTION
OF THE PROGRAMME
The Russian Communist Party, developing the general
tasks of the Soviet government in greater detail, at present
formulates them as follows.
In the Economic Sphere
The present tasks of Soviet power are:
(1) to continue steadily and finish the expropriation of
the bourgeoisie and the conversion of the means of production and distribution into the property of the Soviet
Republic, i.e., the common property of all working people,
which has in the main been completed.
(2) To pay particularly great attention to the development and strengthening of comradely discipline among the
working people and to stimulate their initiative and sense
of responsibility in every field. This is the most important
if not the sole means of completely overcoming capitalism
and the habits formed by the rule of the private ownership
of the means of production. This aim can be achieved only
by slow, persistent work to re-educate the masses; this
re-education has not only become possible now that the
masses have seen that the landowner, capitalist and merchant have really been eliminated, but is actually taking
place in thousands of ways through the practical experience
of the workers and peasants themselves. It is extremely
important in this respect to work for the further organisation
of the working people in trade unions; never before has
this organisation developed as rapidly anywhere in the
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V. I. L E N I N
world as under Soviet power, and it must be developed until
literally all working people are organised in properly constituted, centralised and disciplined trade unions.
8.22 This same task of developing the productive forces
calls for the immediate, extensive and comprehensive employment in science and technology of the specialists who have
been left us as our heritage by capitalism, although, as a
rule, they are imbued with a bourgeois world outlook and
habits. The Party, in close alliance with the trade union
organisations, must continue its former line—on the one
hand, there must not be the slightest political concession to
this bourgeois section of the population, and any counterrevolutionary attempts on its part must be ruthlessly
suppressed, and, on the other hand, there must be a relentless struggle against the pseudo-radical but actually ignorant and conceited opinion that the working people are
capable of overcoming capitalism and the bourgeois social
system without learning from bourgeois specialists, without
making use of their services and without undergoing the
training of a lengthy period of work side by side with them.
Although the ultimate aim of the Soviet government is
to achieve full communism and equal remuneration for all
kinds of work, it cannot, however, introduce this equality
straightaway, at the present time, when only the first steps
of the transition from capitalism to communism are being
taken. For a certain period of time, therefore, we must
retain the present higher remuneration for specialists in
order to give them an incentive to work no worse, and even
better, than they have worked before; and with the same
object in view, we must not reject the system of paying
bonuses for the most successful work, particularly organisational work.
It is equally necessary to surround the bourgeois specialist with a comradely atmosphere created by working hand
in hand with the masses of rank-and-file workers led by
politically-conscious Communists in order to promote
mutual understanding and friendship between workers by
hand and brain whom capitalism kept apart.
The mobilisation of the entire able-bodied population by
the Soviet government, with the trade unions participating,
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
137
for certain public works must be much more widely and
systematically practised than has hitherto been the case.
In the sphere of distribution, the present task of Soviet
power is to continue steadily replacing trade by the planned,
organised and nation-wide distribution of goods. The
goal is the organisation of the entire population in a single
system of consumers’ communes that can distribute all
essential products most rapidly, systematically, economically and with the least expenditure of labour by strictly
centralising the entire distribution machinery.
To achieve this object it is particularly important in
the present period, when there are transitional forms based
on different principles, for the Soviet food supply organisation to make use of the co-operative societies, the only
mass apparatus for systematic distribution inherited from
capitalism.
Being of the opinion that in principle the only correct
policy is the further communist development of this apparatus and not its rejection, the R.C.P. must systematically
pursue the policy of making it obligatory for all members
of the Party to work in the co-operatives and, with the aid
of the trade unions, direct them in a communist spirit, develop the initiative and discipline of the working people who
belong to them, endeavour to get the entire population to
join them, and the co-operatives themselves to merge into
one single co-operative that embraces the whole of the Soviet Republic. Lastly, and most important, the dominating
influence of the proletariat over the rest of the working
people must be constantly maintained, and everywhere
the most varied measures must be tried with a view to facilitating and bringing about the transition from petty-bourgeois co-operatives of the old capitalist type to consumers’
communes led by proletarians and semi-proletarians.
(6) It is impossible to abolish money at one stroke in
the first period of transition from capitalism to communism.
As a consequence, the bourgeois elements of the population
continue to use privately-owned currency notes—these
tokens by which the exploiters obtain the right to receive
public wealth—for the purpose of speculation, profit-making
and robbing the working population. The nationalisation
138
V. I. L E N I N
of the banks is insufficient in itself to combat this survival
of bourgeois robbery. The R.C.P. will strive as speedily as
possible to introduce the most radical measures to pave the
way for the abolition of money, first and foremost to replace
it by savings-bank books, cheques, short-term notes entitling
the holders to receive goods from the public stores, and
so forth, to make it compulsory for money to be deposited
in the banks, etc. Practical experience in paving the way
for, and carrying out, these and similar measures will show
which of them are the most expedient.
(7) In the sphere of finance, the R.C.P. will introduce
a graduated income-and-property tax in all cases where it
is feasible. But these cases cannot be numerous since private property in land, the majority of factories and other
enterprises has been abolished. In the epoch of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the state ownership of the
principal means of production, the state finances must be
based on the direct appropriation of a certain part of the revenue from the different state monopolies to meet the needs
of the state. Revenue and expenditure can be balanced only
if the exchange of commodities is properly organised, and
this will be achieved by the organisation of consumers’
communes and the restoration of the transport system, which
is one of the major immediate objects of the Soviet government.
First page of Lenin’s
manuscript “ Agrarian Section
of the Programme”. 1919
Reduced
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
139
12
AGRARIAN SECTION OF THE PROGRAMME
Soviet power, having completely abolished private property in land, has already started on the implementation
of a whole series of measures aimed at the organisation of
large-scale socialist agriculture. The most important of
these measures are the organisation of state farms (i.e.,
large socialist farms), the encouragement of agricultural
communes (i.e., voluntary associations of tillers of the
land for large-scale farming in common), and societies and
co-operatives for the collective cultivation of the land;
cultivation by the state of all uncultivated lands, no matter
whom they belong to; mobilisation by the state of all agricultural specialists for vigorous measures to raise farming
efficiency, etc.
Regarding all these measures as the only way to raise
the productivity of agricultural labour, which is absolutely
imperative, the R.C.P. seeks to carry them out as fully as
possible, to extend them to the more backward regions of the
country, and to take further steps in this direction.
Inasmuch as the antithesis between town and country is
one of the root causes of the economic and cultural backwardness of the countryside, one which in a period of so deep a
crisis as the present confronts both town and country with
the direct threat of ruin and collapse, the R.C.P. regards
the eradication of this antithesis as one of the basic tasks
of building communism and, alongside the above measures,
considers it necessary extensively and systematically to
enlist industrial workers for the communist development of
agriculture, to promote the activities of the nation-wide
Working Committee of Assistance set up by the Soviet
government with this aim in view, and so on.
140
V. I. L E N I N
In all its work in the countryside the R.C.P. will continue
to rely on the proletarian and semi-proletarian sections
of the rural population, first organising them into an independent force, setting up Poor Peasants’ Committees, Party
cells in the villages, a specific type of trade union for rural
proletarians and semi-proletarians, etc., exerting every
effort to bring them closer to the urban proletariat and wresting them from the influence of the rural bourgeoisie and
petty-property interests.
As far as the kulaks, the rural bourgeoisie, are concerned,
the policy of the R.C.P. is one of decisive struggle against
their attempts at exploitation and the suppression of their
resistance to Soviet, communist, policy.
With regard to the middle peasants, the policy of the
R.C.P. is to draw them into the work of socialist construction gradually and systematically. The Party sets itself
the task of separating them from the kulaks, of winning
them to the side of the working class by carefully attending
to their needs, by combating their backwardness with ideological weapons and not with measures of suppression,
and by striving in all cases where their vital interests
are concerned to come to practical agreements with them,
making concessions to them in determining the methods of
carrying out socialist reforms.
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.) 23
MARCH 18 -23, 1919
Published in Pravda,
March-April 1 9 1 9
Published according to the
book Eighth Congress of the
Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks), Verbatim Report,
Kommunist Publishers, Moscow, 1 9 1 9
Verified with the shorthand
notes and the Pravda text
32
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143
1
SPEECH OPENING THE CONGRESS
MARCH 18
Comrades, our first words at this Congress must be dedicated to Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. Comrades,
as many people said at his funeral today, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov was, for the Party as a whole and for the
entire Soviet Republic, the principal organiser, but he
was much more valuable for our Party Congress and much
closer to it. We have lost a comrade who devoted his last
days entirely to this Congress. His absence will affect the
whole course of our proceedings, and this Congress will feelit with exceptional acuteness. Comrades, I propose that we
honour his memory by rising. (All rise.)
Comrades, we are opening our Party Congress at a very
difficult, complicated and peculiar stage in the Russian
and in the world proletarian revolution. In the first period
after the October Revolution the forces of the Party and
of the Soviet government were almost entirely absorbed
by the tasks of direct defence, of offering direct resistance
to our enemies, the bourgeoisie at home and abroad, who
could not reconcile themselves to the idea that the socialist
republic could exist for any length of time. We nevertheless
gradually began to consolidate our position and the tasks
of construction, organisational tasks, began to come to the
fore. I think that this work of construction and organisation
should be the keynote of our Congress. The programme
problems which, from the standpoint of theory present a big
difficulty and are in the main problems of our development,
and those that have a special place on the Congress agenda—the
organisational question, the question of the Red Army and,
particularly, the question of work in the countryside—all
require us to focus and concentrate our attention on the
144
V. I. L E N I N
main question, which is a very difficult but gratifying one
for socialists to grapple with, namely, the question of organisation. It must be particularly emphasised here that
one of the most difficult problems of communist development, in a country of small peasant farms, one that we
must deal with right now, is the problem of our attitude
towards the middle peasants.
Comrades, it was natural that in the first period, when
we had to fight for the Soviet Republic’s right to existence,
this question should not have been pushed into the foreground on an extensive scale. The relentless war against
the rural bourgeoisie and the kulaks gave prominence to the
organisation of the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat.
But by its next step the Party, which wants to lay the sound
foundations of communist society, must take up the task
of correctly defining our attitude towards the middle peasants. This is a problem of a higher order. We could not
present it on an extensive scale until we had made secure
the basis for the existence of the Soviet Republic. This problem
is a more complicated one and it involves defining our
attitude towards a numerous and strong section of the population. This attitude cannot be defined simply by the answer—struggle or support. As regards the bourgeoisie our
task is defined by the words “struggle”, “suppression”, and
as regards the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat our
task is defined by the words “our support”, but this problem is undoubtedly more complicated. On this point, the
socialists, the best representatives of socialism in the old
days, when they still believed in the revolution and faithfully adhered to its theory and ideals, talked about neutralising the peasantry, i.e., making the middle peasants
a social stratum which, if it did not actively help the proletarian revolution, at least would not hinder it, that would
remain neutral and not go over to the side of our enemies.
This abstract, theoretical formulation of the problem is
quite clear but is inadequate. We have reached the stage
of socialist development when we must draw up definite
and detailed rules and regulations which have been tested
by practical experience in the rural districts to guide us
in our efforts to place our relations with the middle peasants on the basis of a firm alliance and so preclude the pos-
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
145
sibility of a repetition of those mistakes and blunders we
have repeatedly, made in the past. These blunders estranged
the middle peasants from us, although we of the Communist Party, the leading party, were the first who helped
the Russian peasants to throw off the yoke of the landowners and establish real democracy, which gave us every
ground for counting on their complete confidence. This is
not the type of problem that calls for ruthless, swift suppression and attack, it is more complicated. But I shall allow
myself to say confidently that after our twelve months of
preliminary work we shall be able to cope with this problem.
A few words about our international situation. Comrades,
you are all, of course, aware that the founding of the Third,
Communist International in Moscow is an event of the greatest significance insofar as our position in the world is concerned. We still have confronting us a vast, real and wellarmed military force—all the strongest powers of the world.
Nevertheless, we can confidently say to ourselves that what
outwardly seems to be a gigantic force, and which physically is immeasurably stronger than we are, has been shaken. It
is no longer a force. It no longer has its former stability. Therefore there is nothing utopian in our aim and in the task
we set ourselves—to be victorious in the struggle against
this giant. On the contrary, although we are now artificially cut off from the whole world, the newspapers every day
report the growth of the revolutionary movement in all countries. Moreover, we know, we see, that this growing movement is assuming the Soviet form. And this is a guarantee
that in establishing the Soviet government we discovered
the international, world form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. We are firmly convinced that the proletariat all over
the world has taken this path of struggle, the creation of
these forms of proletarian rule, the rule of the workers and of
the working people in general, and that no power on earth
can halt the progress of the world communist revolution
towards the world Soviet republic. (Prolonged applause.)
Comrades, permit me now on behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party to declare the
Eighth Congress open and proceed to the election of the
presidium.
146
V. I. L E N I N
2
REPORT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
MARCH 18
(Stormy prolonged applause. Cries of “Long live Ilyich!”
“Long live Comrade Lenin!”)
Comrades, permit me to begin with the political report
of the Central Committee. To present a report on the Central
Committee’s political activities since the last Congress is
tantamount to presenting a report on the whole of our revolution; and I think that everybody will agree that not only
is it impossible for one individual to perform such a task
in so short a time, but that it is, in general, beyond the
powers of one individual. I have therefore decided to confine myself to those points which, in my opinion, are particularly important in the history of what our Party was called
upon to do during this period and in the light of our present
tasks. I must say that at a time like this I find it beyond
my powers to devote myself exclusively to history, to reviewing the past without bearing in mind the present and
the future.
To begin with foreign policy, it goes without saying that
the outstanding features here were our relations with German
imperialism and the Brest peace. I think it is worth while
dwelling on this question, because its importance is not
merely historical. I think that the proposal the Soviet
government made to the Allied powers, or, to put it more
correctly, our government’s consent to the well-known proposal for a conference to be held on Princes Islands 24 —
I think that this proposal, and our reply, reflect, in some
respects, and in important respects at that, the relations
with imperialism that we established at the time of the
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
147
Brest peace. That is why I think it important to deal with
the history of this matter in view of the rapidity with which
events are occurring.
When the Brest peace was decided on, the Soviet system
and even Party development were still in the initial stages.
You know that at that time our Party as a whole still possessed too little experience to determine, even approximately, how fast we should travel the path we had chosen.
The chaotic conditions that, as you know, we had to take
over from the past made it extremely difficult at that time
to survey events and obtain an exact picture of what was
going on. Moreover, our extreme isolation from Western
Europe and all other countries deprived us of the objective
material necessary to assess the possible rapidity or the ways
in which the proletarian revolution in the West would develop. This complex situation made the question of the Brest
peace a matter of no little dissension in the ranks of our
Party.
But events have proved that this enforced retreat before
German imperialism, which had taken cover behind an
extremely oppressive, outrageous and predatory peace, was
the only correct move in the relations between the young
socialist republic and world imperialism (one half of world
imperialism). At that time we, who had just overthrown
the landowners and the bourgeoisie in Russia, had absolutely
no choice but to retreat before the forces of world imperialism. Those who condemned this retreat from the point of
view of a revolutionary were actually supporting a fundamentally wrong and non-Marxist position. They had forgotten the conditions, the long and strenuous process of
development of the Kerensky period, and the enormous
preparatory work done in the Soviets before we reached the
stage when, in October, after the severe July defeats, after
the Kornilov revolt, the vast mass of working people was
at last ready and determined to overthrow the bourgeoisie,
and when the organised material forces necessary for this
purpose had become available. Naturally, anything like
this was then out of the question on an international scale.
In view of this, the fight against world imperialism had
this aim—to continue the work of disintegrating imperialism and of enlightening and uniting the working class,
148
V. I. L E N I N
which had everywhere begun to stir, but whose actions have
still not become completely definite.
Hence, the only correct policy was the one we adopted
in respect of the Brest peace, although, of course, at the
time, that policy intensified the enmity of a number of
petty-bourgeois elements, who are not by any means necessarily hostile to socialism under all conditions, or in all
countries. In this respect history offered us a lesson which
we must learn thoroughly, for there can be no doubt that
we shall often be called upon to apply it. This lesson is
that the attitude the party of the proletariat should adopt
towards the petty-bourgeois democratic parties, towards
those elements, strata, groups and classes which are particularly strong and numerous in Russia, and which exist
in all countries, constitutes an extremely complex and difficult problem. Petty-bourgeois elements vacillate between
the old society and the new. They cannot be the motive
force of either the old society, or the new. On the other hand,
they are not bound to the old society to the same degree
as the landowners and the bourgeoisie. Patriotism is a
sentiment bound up with the economic conditions of life
of precisely the small proprietors. The bourgeoisie is more
international than the small proprietors. We came up against
this fact during the period of the Brest peace, when the
Soviet government set a higher value on the world dictatorship of the proletariat and the world revolution than on
all national sacrifices, burdensome as they were. This
compelled us to enter into a violent and ruthless clash with
the petty-bourgeois elements. At that time a number of
those elements joined forces with the bourgeoisie and the
landowners against us, although, subsequently, they began
to waver.
The question that several comrades have raised here as
to our attitude towards the petty-bourgeois parties is dealt
with extensively in our programme and will, in fact, crop
up in the discussion of every point of the agenda. In the
course of our revolution this question has ceased to be an
abstract and general one, and has become concrete. At the
time of the Brest peace our duty as internationalists was
at all costs to help the proletarian elements to strengthen
and consolidate their positions and this drove the petty-
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
149
bourgeois parties away from us. After the German revolution, as we know, the petty-bourgeois elements again began
to vacillate. Those events opened the eyes of many who, as
the proletarian revolution was maturing, had assessed the
situation from the point of view of the old type of patriotism, and had assessed it not only in a non-socialist way,
but, in general, incorrectly. At the present time, owing to
the difficult food situation and the war which we are still
waging against the Entente, a wave of vacillation is again
sweeping through the petty-bourgeois democrats. We have
been obliged to reckon with these vacillations before; but
now we must all learn a tremendously important lesson,
namely, that situations never repeat themselves in exactly
the same form. The new situation is far more complex.
It can be properly assessed, and our policy will be correct,
if we draw on the experience of the Brest peace. When we
consented to the proposal for a conference on Princes Islands
we knew that we were consenting to an extremely harsh
peace. On the other hand, however, we now know better
how the tide of proletarian revolution is rising in Western
Europe, how unrest is changing into conscious discontent,
and how the latter is giving rise to a world, Soviet, proletarian movement. At that time we were groping, guessing
when the revolution in Europe might break out—we presumed, on the basis of our theoretical conviction, that the
revolution must take place—but today we have a number
of facts showing how the revolution is maturing in other
countries and how the movement began. That is why, in
relation to Western Europe, in relation to the Entente
countries, we have, or shall have, to repeat a good deal of
what we did at the time of the Brest peace. It will be much
easier for us to do this now that we have the experience of
Brest. When our Central Committee discussed the question
of participating in a conference on Princes Islands together with the Whites—which in fact amounted to the annexation of all the territory the Whites then occupied—this
question of an armistice did not evoke a single voice of protest among the proletariat; and that also was the attitude
of our Party. At any rate, I did not hear of any dissatisfaction, or indignation, from any quarter. The reason for this
was that our lesson in international politics had borne fruit.
150
V. I. L E N I N
Insofar as concerns the petty-bourgeois elements, the
problem facing the Party has not yet been fully solved.
On a number of questions, in fact on all the questions on
the agenda, we have, during the past year, laid the foundation for a correct solution of this problem, particularly in
relation to the middle peasants. In theory we agree that the
middle peasants are not our enemies, that they need special
treatment, and that in their case the situations will vary
in accordance with numerous circumstances attending the
revolution, in particular, the answer to the question “For
or against patriotism?” For us such questions are of secondrate importance, even of third-rate importance; but the
petty bourgeoisie is completely blinded by them. Furthermore, all these elements waver in the struggle and become
absolutely spineless. They do not know what they want,
and are incapable of defending their position. Here we
need extremely flexible and extremely cautious tactics,
for sometimes it is necessary to give with one hand and take
away with the other. The petty-bourgeois elements and not
we are to blame for this, for they cannot make up their
minds. We can see this in practice now. Only today we
read in the newspapers what the German Independents, 25
who possess such strong forces as Kautsky and Hilferding,
have set out to attain. You know that they wanted to incorporate the workers’ councils in the constitution of the
German democratic republic, i.e., marry the Constituent
Assembly to the dictatorship of the proletariat. From our
point of view this is such a mockery of common sense in
our revolution, the German Revolution, the Hungarian
revolution and the maturing Polish revolution, that we can
only express our amazement. It must be said that such vacillating elements are to be found in the most advanced countries. Educated, well-informed, intelligent people, even
in such an advanced capitalist country as Germany, are
sometimes a hundred times more muddle-headed and hysterical than our backward petty bourgeoisie. In this there is a
lesson for Russia in respect of the petty-bourgeois parties
and the middle peasants. For a long time we shall have a
difficult, double problem. For a long time these parties
are bound to take one step forward and two steps back
because their economic status compels them to do so, and
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
151
because their acceptance of socialism is not due to a definite
conviction that the bourgeois system is worthless. We
cannot expect them to be loyal to socialism, and it would
be absurd to rely on their socialist convictions. They will
support socialism only when they are convinced that there
is no other way out, when the bourgeoisie is finally defeated
and smashed.
I am unable to give you a systematic summary of the
experience of the past year and have glanced at the past
only in the light of what is required for our policy tomorrow
and the day after. The chief lesson is that we must be extremely cautious in our attitude towards the middle peasants
and the petty bourgeoisie., The experience of the past
demands it, we know it from the experience of Brest. We shall
have to change our line of conduct very often, and this
may appear strange and incomprehensible to the casual
observer. “How is that?” he will say. “Yesterday you were
making promises to the petty bourgeoisie, while today Dzerzhinsky announces that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
and the Mensheviks will be stood against the wall. What a
contradiction!” Yes, it is a contradiction. But the conduct
of the petty-bourgeois democrats themselves is contradictory: they do not know where to sit, and try to sit between
two stools, jump from one to the other and fall now to the
right and how to the left. We have changed our tactics
towards them, and whenever they turn towards us we say
“Welcome” to them. We have not the slightest intention of
expropriating the middle peasants; we certainly do not
want to use force against the petty-bourgeois democrats.
We say to them, “You are not a serious enemy. Our enemy
is the bourgeoisie. But if you join forces with them, we
shall be obliged to apply the measures of the proletarian
dictatorship to you, too.”
I shall now deal with questions of internal development,
briefly touch on the main features which characterise our
political experience and sum up the political activities
of the Central Committee during this period. These political activities of the Central Committee manifested themselves
daily in questions of immense importance. Were it not for the
fact that we worked together so well and so harmoniously, as
I have already told you, we would not have been able to act
152
V. I. L E N I N
as we did, we would not have been able to solve these urgent
problems. As to the question of the Red Army, which is now
rousing so much discussion, and which stands as a special
item on the agenda of this Congress, we adopted a host of
minor, individual decisions which the Central Committee of
our Party submitted to and got carried in the Council of
People’s Commissars and the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee. A still larger number of important individual
assignments were made by the respective People’s Commissars, all of which systematically and consistently pursued
one common line.
The organisation of a Red Army was an entirely new question which had never been dealt with before, even theoretically. Marx once said that it is to the credit of the Paris
Communards that they carried into effect decisions which
were not borrowed from some preconceived theories, but
were dictated by actual necessity. 26 Marx said this about
the Communards in a somewhat ironical vein because there
were two predominant trends in the Commune—the Blanquists and the Proudhonists—and both were compelled to
act contrary to their doctrines. We, however, acted in conformity with the tenets of Marxism. At the same time, the
political activities of the Central Committee in each concrete case were determined entirely by what was absolutely
indispensable. We were often obliged to feel our way. This
will be strongly emphasised by any historian capable of
presenting an integrated picture of the activities of the
Central Committee of the Party and of the Soviet government
during the past year. This fact becomes all the more striking when we try to embrace our past experience in a single
glance. But this did not deter us in the least even on October 10, 1917, when the question of seizing power was decided. We did not doubt that we should have to experiment,
as Comrade Trotsky expressed it. We undertook a task which
nobody in the world has ever attempted on so large a scale.
This is also true of the Red Army. When the war drew
to a close the army began to break up, and many people
thought at the time that this was a purely Russian phenomenon. But we see that the Russian revolution was in fact the
dress rehearsal, or one of the rehearsals, for the world proletarian revolution. When we discussed the Treaty of Brest,
DRAFT PROGRAMME OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
153
when the question of peace arose early in January 1918,
we did not yet know when, and in which other countries,
armies would begin to disintegrate. We proceeded from
experiment to experiment; we endeavoured to create a volunteer army, feeling our way, testing the ground and experimenting to find a solution to the problem in the given
situation. And the nature of the problem was clear. Unless
we defended the socialist republic by force of arms, we could
not exist. A ruling class would never surrender its power to
an oppressed class. And the latter would have to prove in
practice that it is capable not only of overthrowing the
exploiters, but also of organising its self-defence and of
staking everything on it. We have always said that there
are different kinds of wars. We condemned the imperialist
war, but we did not reject war in general. Those who accused
us of being militarists were hopelessly muddled. And when
in the report of the Berne Conference of yellow socialists
I read that Kautsky had said that the Bolsheviks had introduced not socialism but militarism, I smiled and shrugged
my shoulders. As if there was ever a big revolution in history that was not connected with war! Of course not! We are
living not merely in a state, but in a system of states, and
it is inconceivable for the Soviet Republic to exist alongside
of the imperialist states for any length of time. One or the
other must triumph in the end. And before that end comes
there will have to be a series of frightful collisions between
the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois states. If the ruling
class, the proletariat, wants to hold power, it must, therefore, prove its ability to do so by its military organisation.
How was a class which had hitherto served as cannon-fodder
for the military commanders of the ruling imperialist class
to create its own commanders? How was it to solve the
problem of combining the enthusiasm, the new revolutionary
creative spirit of the oppressed and the employment of the
store of the bourgeois science and technology of militarism
in their worst forms without which this class would not be
able to master modern technology and modern methods of
warfare?
Here we were faced with a problem which a year’s experience has now summed up for us. When we included the
question of bourgeois specialists in the revolutionary pro-
154
V. I. L E N I N
gramme of our Party, we summed up the Party’s practical
experience in one of the most important questions. As far
as I remember the earlier teachers of socialism, who foresaw a great deal of what would take place in the future
socialist revolution and discerned many of its features,
never expressed an opinion on this question. It did not exist
for them, for it arose only when we proceeded to create a Red
Army. That meant creating an army filled with enthusiasm
out of an oppressed class which had been used as mere cannon-fodder, and it meant compelling that army to utilise
all that was most coercive and abhorrent in what we had
inherited from capitalism.
This contradiction, with which we are faced in connection
with the Red Army, faces us in every organisational field.
Take the question which engaged our attention most of
all, namely, the transition from workers’ control to workers’ management in industry. Following the decrees and
decisions passed by the Council of People’s Commissars and
local Soviet authorities—all of which contributed to our
political experience in this field—actually the only thing
left for the Central Committee to do was to sum up. In a
matter like this it was scarcely able to give a lead in the
true sense of the word. One has only to recall how clumsy,
immature and casual were our first decrees and decisions
on the subject of workers’ control of industry. We thought
that it was an easy matter; practice showed that it was
necessary to build, but we gave no answer whatever to the
question as to how to build. Every nationalised factory,
every branch of nationalised industry, transport, and particularly railway transport—that most striking example
of highly centralised capitalist machinery built on the
basis of large-scale engineering, and most vital for the state
—all embodied the concentrated experience of capitalism, and created immense difficulties for us.
We are still far from having overcome these difficulties.
At first we regarded them in an entirely abstract way, like
revolutionary preachers, who had absolutely no idea of
how to set to work. There were lots of people, of course, who
accused us—and all the socialists and Social-Democrats
are accusing us today—of having undertaken this task
without knowing how to finish it. But these accusations
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
155
are ridiculous, made by people who lack the spark of life.
As if one can set out to make a great revolution and know
beforehand how it is to be completed! Such knowledge cannot
be derived from books and our decision could spring only
from the experience of the masses. And I say that it is to
our credit that amidst incredible difficulties we undertook
to solve a problem with which until then we were only half
familiar, that we inspired the proletarian masses to display
their own initiative, that we nationalised the industrial
enterprises, and so forth. I remember that in Smolny we
passed as many as ten or twelve decrees at one sitting. That
was an expression of our determination and desire to stimulate the spirit of experiment and initiative among the proletarian masses. We now have experience. Now; we have
passed, or are about to pass, from workers’ control to workers’ management of industry. Instead of being absolutely
helpless as we were before, we are now armed with experience, and as far as this is possible, we have summed it up
in our programme. We shall have to discuss this in detail
when we deal with the question of organisation. We would
not have been able to do this work had we not had the
assistance and collaboration of the comrades from the trade
unions.
In Western Europe the situation is different. There our
comrades regard the trade unions as an evil, because they
are commanded so completely by yellow representatives
of the old type of socialism that the Communists do not
see that much advantage is to be gained from their support.
Many West-European Communists; even Rosa Luxemburg,
are advocating the dissolution of the trade unions. 27 That
shows how much more difficult this problem is in Western
Europe. In this country we could not have held out for a
single month had it not been for the support of the trade
unions. In this we have the experience of a vast amount of
practical work, which enables us to set to work to solve
extremely difficult problems.
Take the question of the specialists which faces us at
every turn, which arises in connection with every appointment, and which the leaders of our economy, and the Central Committee of the Party, are continually having to face.
Under existing conditions the Central Committee of the
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Party cannot perform its functions if it adheres to hard and
fast forms. If we could not appoint comrades able to work
independently in their particular fields, we should be unable
to function at all. It was only thanks to the fact that we
had organisers like Yakov Sverdlov that we were able to
work under war conditions without a single conflict worth
noting. And in this work we were obliged to accept the
assistance offered us by people who possessed knowledge
acquired in the past.
In particular, take the administration of the War Department. We could not have solved that problem had we
not trusted the General Staff and the big specialists in organisation. There were differences of opinion among us on
particular questions, but fundamentally, there was no
room for doubt. We availed ourselves of the assistance of
bourgeois experts who were thoroughly imbued with the
bourgeois mentality, who were disloyal to us, and will
remain disloyal to us for many years to come. Nevertheless,
the idea that we can build communism with the aid of pure
Communists, without the assistance of bourgeois experts,
is childish. We have been steeled in the struggle, we have
the forces, and we are united; and we must proceed with our
organisational work, making use of the knowledge and
experience of those experts. This is an indispensable condition, without which socialism cannot be built. Socialism
cannot be built unless we utilise the heritage of capitalist
culture. The only material we have to build communism
with is what has been left us by capitalism.
We must now build in a practical way, and we have to
build communist society with the aid of our enemies. This
looks like a contradiction, an irreconcilable contradiction,
perhaps. As a matter of fact, this is the only way the problem of building communism can be solved. And reviewing
our experience, glancing at the way this problem confronts
us every day, surveying the practical activities of the Central Committee, it seems to me that, in the main, our Party
has found a solution to this problem. We have encountered
immense difficulties, but this was the only way the problem could be solved. The bourgeois experts must be hemmed
in by our organised, constructive and united activities so
that they will be compelled to fall in line with the proletar-
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157
iat, no matter how much they resist and fight at every step.
We must set them to work as a technical and cultural force
so as to preserve them and to transform an uncultured and
barbarian capitalist country into a cultured, communist
country. And it seems to me that during the past year we
have learned how to build, that we have taken the right
road, and shall not now be diverted from this road.
I should also like to deal briefly with the food question
and the question of the countryside. Food has always been
our most difficult problem. In a country where the proletariat could only assume power with the aid of the peasantry, where the proletariat had to serve as the agent of a
petty-bourgeois revolution, our revolution was largely a
bourgeois revolution until the Poor Peasants’ Committees
were set up, i.e., until the summer and even the autumn of
1918. We are not afraid to admit that. We accomplished the
October Revolution so easily because the peasants as a whole
supported us and fought the landowners for they saw that as
far as they were concerned we would go the limit, because
we were giving legal effect to what the Socialist-Revolutionary newspapers had been printing, to that which the cowardly petty bourgeoisie had promised, but could not carry out.
But from the moment the Poor Peasants’ Committees began
to be organised, our revolution became a proletarian revolution. We were faced with a problem which even now has
not been fully solved, and it is extremely important that
we have put it on a practical footing. The Poor Peasants’
Committees were a transition stage. The first decree on their
organisation was passed by the Soviet government on the
recommendation of Comrade Tsyurupa, who at that time was
in charge of food affairs. We have to save the non-agricultural population that was tormented by hunger. That could
be done only with the aid of Poor Peasants’ Committees,
which were proletarian organisations. And only when the
October Revolution began to spread to the rural districts
and was consummated, in the summer of 1918, did we acquire
a real proletarian base; only then did our revolution become
a proletarian revolution in fact, and not merely in our
proclamations, promises and declarations.
We have not yet solved the problem that faces our Party
of creating the necessary forms of organisation of the rural
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proletariat and semi-proletariat. Recently I visited Petrograd and attended the First Congress of Farm Labourers
of Petrograd Gubernia. 28 I then saw how we were feeling
our way in this matter, but I think that progress will undoubtedly be made. I must say that the principal lesson
we learned from our work of political leadership in the past
year was that we must find organisational support in this
field. We took a step in this direction when we formed the
Poor Peasants’ Committees, held new elections to the Soviets and revised our food policy, where we had encountered
immense difficulties. In those outlying parts of Russia which
are now becoming Soviet—the Ukraine and the Don region—
this policy may have to be modified. It would be a mistake
to draw up stereotyped decrees for all parts of Russia; it
would be a mistake for the Bolshevik Communists, the
Soviet officials in the Ukraine and the Don, to apply these
decrees to other regions wholesale, without discrimination.
We shall meet with no few peculiar situations; we shall
under no circumstances bind ourselves to uniform patterns;
we shall not decide once and for all that our experience,
the experience of Central Russia, must be applied in its
entirety to every region. We have only just taken up the
problems of real development; we are only just taking the
first steps in this direction. An immense field of work is
opening before us.
I said that the first decisive step the Soviet government
took was to create the Poor Peasants’ Committees. This
measure was carried out by our food supply officials and
was dictated by necessity. But in order to complete our
tasks we must have something more than temporary organisations like these Committees. Alongside the Soviets
we have the trade unions, which we are using as a school
for training the backward masses. The top layer of workers
who actually administered Russia during the past year, who
bore the brunt of the work in carrying out our policy, and
who were our mainstay—this layer in Russia is an extremely thin one. We have become convinced of that, we are
feeling it. If a future historian ever collects information
on the groups which administered Russia during these
seventeen months, on how many hundreds, or how many
thousands of individuals were engaged in this work and
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159
bore the entire, incredible burden of administering the
country—nobody will believe that it was done by so few
people. The number was so small because there were so
few intelligent, educated and capable political leaders in
Russia. This layer was a thin one in Russia, and in the
course of the recent struggle it overtaxed its strength, became
overworked, did more than its strength allowed. I think
that at this Congress we shall devise practical means of
utilising ever new forces on a mass scale in industry and—
what is more important—in the rural districts, of enlisting
in Soviet activities workers and peasants who are on, or
even below, the average level. Without their assistance on
a mass scale further activities, I think, will be impossible.
Since my time has almost expired, I want to say only
a few words about our attitude towards the middle peasants.
The attitude we should take towards the middle peasants
was, in principle, quite clear to us even before the revolution. The task that faced us was to neutralise them. At a
meeting in Moscow where the question of our attitude
towards petty-bourgeois parties was discussed, I quoted the
exact words of Engels, who not only pointed out that the
middle peasants were our allies, but also expressed the view
that it would be possible, perhaps, to dispense with coercion,
with repressive measures even as regards the big peasants. 29 In Russia, this assumption did not prove correct;
we were, are, and will be, in a state of open civil war with
the kulaks. This is inevitable. We have seen it in practice.
But owing to the inexperience of our Soviet officials and
to the difficulties of the problem, the blows which were
intended for the kulaks very frequently fell on the middle
peasants. In this respect we have sinned a great deal, but
the experience we have gained will enable us to do everything to avoid this in future. Such is the problem that now
faces us not theoretically but practically. You are well
aware that the problem is a difficult one. We have no advantages to offer the middle peasant; he is a materialist, a practical man, who demands definite material advantages, which
at present we are not in a position to offer and which the
country will have to dispense with for, perhaps, many
months of a severe struggle that now promises to end in
complete victory. But there is a good deal we can do in our
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V. I. L E N I N
practical administrative work—we can improve our administrative machinery and eliminate a host of abuses. The
line of our Party, which has not done enough to form a bloc,
an alliance, an agreement with the middle peasants, can
and must be corrected.
This, in brief, is all I can say at present about the economic and political work of the Central Committee during
the past year. I must now very briefly deal with the second
part of the duty entrusted to me by the Central Committee—to make the Central Committee report on organisation. This duty could have been performed in the way it
should really be performed only by Yakov Mikhailovich
Sverdlov, who had been appointed to make the report on
this question on behalf of the Central Committee. His unbelievably phenomenal memory, in which he retained the
greater part of his report, and his personal acquaintance
with the work of organisation in the various localities would
have made it possible for him to deliver this report better
than anybody else. I am unable to replace him even in onehundredth part, for in this work we were obliged to rely,
and were absolutely justified in relying, entirely on Comrade
Sverdlov, who very often adopted decisions on his own
responsibility.
I can give you short excerpts from the written reports
now available. The Secretariat of the Central Committee,
which was unable to complete its work in time, has most
definitely promised that the written reports will be ready
for printing next week, that they will be mimeographed and
distributed to the Congress delegates. They will supplement
the brief, fragmentary remarks which I can make here. In
the material of the report available at present in writing,
we find, first of all figures relating to the number of incoming documents: 1,483 in December 1918, 1,537 in January
1919 and 1,840 in February. The distribution of these documents in percentages is given, but I will take the liberty
of not reading this. Comrades who are interested will see
from the report when distributed that, for instance, 490
persons visited the Secretariat in November. And the comrades who handed me the report say it can be only half the
number of visitors the Secretariat dealt with, because dozens of delegates were received daily by Comrade Sverdlov,
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161
and more than half of these were probably not Soviet but
Party officials.
I must draw attention to the report on the activities
of the Federation of Foreign Groups. 30 I know something
of the work in this field only insofar as I have been able to
cast a glance at the material on the foreign groups. At first
there were seven such groups, now there are nine. Comrades
living in purely Great-Russian districts, who have not had
the opportunity of becoming directly acquainted with these
groups and who have not seen the reports in the newspapers,
will please read the excerpts from the newspapers, which I
shall take the liberty of not reading in full. I must say that
here we see the real foundation of what we have done for the
Third International. The Third International was founded
in Moscow at a short congress, and Comrade Zinoviev will
make a detailed report on this and on everything proposed
by the Central Committee on all questions concerning the
International. The fact that we succeeded in doing so much
in so short a time at the congress of Communists in Moscow
is due to the tremendous preparatory work that was performed by the Central Committee of our Party and by the
organiser of the congress, Comrade Sverdlov. Propaganda
and agitation were carried on among foreigners in Russia
and a number of foreign groups were organised. Dozens
of members of these groups were fully acquainted with
the main plans and with the guiding lines of general policy. Hundreds of thousands of war prisoners from armies
which the imperialists had created solely in their own interests, upon returning to Hungary, Germany and Austria,
thoroughly infected those countries with the germs of Bolshevism. And the fact that groups and parties sympathising
with us predominate in those countries is due to work which
is not visible on the surface and which is only briefly summed
up in the report on the organisational activities of the
foreign groups in Russia; it constituted one of the most significant features in the activities of the Russian Communist
Party as one of the units of the world communist party.
Further, the material handed to me contains data on the
reports received by the Central Committee, and the organisations from which they were received. And here our
Russian lack of organisational ability stands out in all
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V. I. L E N I N
its shameful wretchedness. Reports were received regularly
from organisations in four gubernias, irregularly from fourteen, and isolated reports from sixteen. The gubernias in
question are enumerated in the list, which permit me not
to read. Of course, this lack of organisational ability, these
extreme organisational drawbacks, are very largely, but
not entirely, to be explained by the conditions of civil war.
Least of all should we use this to hide behind, to excuse
and defend ourselves. Organisational activity was never a
strong point with the Russians in general, nor with the
Bolsheviks in particular; nevertheless the chief problem
of the proletarian revolution is that of organisation. It is
not without reason that the question of organisation is
here assigned a most prominent place. This is a thing we
must fight for, and fight for with firmness and determination,
using every means at our disposal. We can do nothing here
except by prolonged education and re-education. This is
a field in which revolutionary violence and dictatorship
can be applied only by way of abuse and I make bold to
warn you against such abuse. Revolutionary violence and
dictatorship are excellent things when applied in the right
way and against the right people. But they cannot be applied
in the field of organisation. We have by no means solved
this problem of education, re-education and prolonged
organisational work, and we must tackle it systematically.
We have here a detailed financial report. Of the various
items, the largest is in connection with workers’ book publishing and with newspapers: 1,000,000, again 1,000,000
and again 1,000,000—3,000,000; Party organisations,
2,800,000; editorial expenses, 3,600,000. More detailed
figures are given in this report, which will be duplicated
and distributed to all the delegates. Meanwhile the comrades
can get their information from the representatives of the
groups. Permit me not to read these figures. The comrades
who submitted the reports gave in them what is most important and illustrative—the general results of the propaganda work performed in the sphere of publication. The
Kommunist Publishing House released sixty-two books.
A net profit of 2,000,000 in 1918 was earned by the newspaper
Pravda, 25,000,000 copies of which were issued during the
year. The newspaper Bednota31 earned a net profit of 2,370,000
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163
and 33,000,000 copies were issued. The comrades of the
Organising Bureau of the Central Committee have promised
to rearrange the detailed figures they possess in such a way
as to give at least two comparable criteria. It will then be
clear what vast educational work is being performed by the
Party, which for the first time in history is using modern
large-scale capitalist printing equipment in the interests
of the workers and peasants and not in the interests of the
bourgeoisie. We have been accused thousands and millions
of times of having violated the freedom of the press and of
having renounced democracy. Our accusers call it democracy
when the capitalists can buy out the press and the rich can
use the press in their own interests. We call that plutocracy
and not democracy. Everything that bourgeois culture has
created for the purpose of deceiving the people and defending
the capitalists we have taken from them in order to satisfy
the political needs of the workers and peasants. And in this
respect we have done more than any socialist party has
done in a quarter of a century, or in half a century. Nevertheless, we have done far too little of what has to be done.
The last item in the material handed to me by the Bureau
concerns circular letters. Fourteen of these were issued, and
the comrades who are not acquainted with them, or who
are not sufficiently acquainted with them, are invited to
read them. Of course, the Central Committee was far from
being as active as it should have been in this respect, but
you must bear in mind the conditions under which we worked,
when we were obliged to give political instructions on a
number of questions every day, and only in exceptional,
even rare, cases were we able to do so through the Political
Bureau or the plenary meeting of the Central Committee.
Under such circumstances it was impossible for us to send
out frequent political circulars.
I repeat that we, as the militant organ of a militant party,
in time of civil war, cannot work in any other way. If we
did, it would be only a half-measure, or a parliament, and
in the era of dictatorship questions cannot be settled, nor
can the Party, or the Soviet organisations, be directed by
parliamentary means. Comrades, now that we have taken
over the bourgeois printing-presses and papers the importance
of the Central Committee’s circular letters is not so great.
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V. I. L E N I N
We send out in the form of circular letters only such instructions as cannot be published, for in our activities, which
were conducted publicly in spite of their vast dimensions,
underground work nevertheless remained, still remains,
and will remain. We were never afraid of being reproached
for our underground methods and secrecy, but on the contrary were proud of them. And when we found ourselves in a
situation in which, after overthrowing our bourgeoisie, we
were faced with the hostility of the European bourgeoisie,
secrecy remained a feature of our activities and underground
methods a feature of our work.
With this, comrades, I conclude my report. (Applause.)
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165
3
REPORT ON THE PARTY PROGRAMME
MARCH 19
(Applause.) Comrades, according to the division of subjects agreed on between Comrade Bukharin and myself,
it is my task to explain the point of view of the commission
on a number of concrete and most disputed points, or points
which interest the Party most at the present time.
I shall begin by dealing briefly with the points which
Comrade Bukharin touched on at the end of his report as
points of dispute among us in the commission; The first
relates to the structure of the preamble to the programme.
In my opinion, Comrade Bukharin did not quite correctly
explain here the reason the majority on the commission
rejected all attempts to draw up the programme in such a
way that everything relating to the old capitalism would
be deleted. By the way Comrade Bukharin spoke he sometimes seemed to imply that the majority on the commission
was apprehensive of what might be said about this, apprehensive that they would be accused of insufficient respect
for the past. There can be no doubt that when the position
of the majority is presented in this way it seems rather ridiculous. But this is very far from the truth. The majority
rejected these attempts because they would be wrong. They
would not correspond to the real state of affairs. Pure
imperialism, without the fundamental basis of capitalism,
has never existed, does not exist anywhere, and never will
exist. This is an incorrect generalisation of everything
that was said of the syndicates, cartels, trusts and finance
capitalism, when finance capitalism was depicted as though
it had none of the foundations of the old capitalism under it.
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V. I. L E N I N
That is wrong. It would be particularly wrong for the era
of the imperialist war and for the era following the imperialist war. Engels in his time, in one of his reflections on
the future war, wrote that it would involve much more
severe devastation than that caused by the Thirty Years’
War; that in a large degree mankind would be reduced to
savagery, that our artificial apparatus of trade and industry
would collapse. 32 At the beginning of the war the traitorsocialists and opportunists boasted of the tenacity of capitalism and derided the “fanatics or semi-anarchists”, as they
called us. “Look,” they said, “these predictions have not come
true. Events have shown that they were true only of a very
small number of countries and for a very short period of
time!” And now, not only in Russia and not only in Germany, but even in the victor countries, a gigantic collapse of
modern capitalism is beginning, a collapse, so gigantic that
it frequently removes this artificial apparatus and restores
the old capitalism.
When Comrade Bukharin stated that an attempt might
be made to present an integral picture of the collapse of
capitalism and imperialism, we objected to it in the commission, and I must object to it here. Just try it, and you
will see that you will not succeed. Comrade Bukharin made
one such attempt in the commission, and himself gave it
up. I am absolutely convinced that if anybody could do this,
it is Comrade Bukharin, who has studied this question
very extensively and thoroughly. I assert that such an attempt cannot be successful, because the task is a wrong one.
We in Russia are now experiencing the consequences of the
imperialist war and the beginning of the dictatorship of
the proletariat. At the same time, in a number of the regions
of Russia, cut off from each other more than formerly, we
frequently see a regeneration of capitalism and the development of its early stage. That is something we cannot
escape. If the programme were to be written in the way
Comrade Bukharin wanted, it would be a wrong programme.
At best, it would be a reproduction of all the best that has
been said of finance capitalism and imperialism, but it would
not reproduce reality, precisely because this reality is not
integral. A programme made up of heterogeneous parts is
inelegant (but that, of course, is not important), but any
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167
other programme would simply be incorrect. However unpleasant it may be, whatever it may lack in proportion, we
shall be unable for a long time to escape this heterogeneity,
this necessity of constructing from different materials. When
we do escape it, we shall create another programme. But
then we shall already be living in a socialist society. It
would be ridiculous to pretend that things will be then what
they are now.
We are living at a time when a number of the most elementary and fundamental manifestations of capitalism
have been revived. Take, for instance, the collapse of transport, which we are experiencing so well, or rather so badly,
in our own case. This same thing is taking place in other
countries, too, even in the victor countries. And what does
the collapse of transport mean under the imperialist system? A return to the most primitive forms of commodity
production. We know very well what our profiteers or bagmen
are. This latter word, I think, has up to now been unknown
to foreigners. And now? Speak to the comrades who have
arrived for the Congress of the Third International. It turns
out that similar words are beginning to appear in both Germany and Switzerland. And this is a category you cannot
fit into any dictatorship of the proletariat; you have to return to the very dawn of capitalist society and commodity
production.
To escape from this sad reality by creating a smooth and
integral programme is to escape into something ethereal
that is not of this world, to write a wrong programme.
And it is by no means reverence for the past, as Comrade
Bukharin politely hinted, which induced us here to insert
passages from the old programme. What appeared to be
implied was this: the programme was written in 1903 with
the participation of Lenin; the programme is undoubtedly
a bad one; but since old people love most of all to recall the
past, in a new era a new programme has been drawn up
which, out of reverence for the past, repeats the old programme.
If it were so, such cranks ought to be laughed at. I
assert that it is not so. The capitalism described in 1903
remains in existence in 1919 in the Soviet proletarian republic
just because of the disintegration of imperialism, because
of its collapse. Capitalism of this kind can be found, for
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V. I. L E N I N
instance, in Samara and in Vyatka gubernias, which are not
very far from Moscow. In a period when civil war is rending
the country, we shall not soon emerge from this situation,
from this profiteering. That is why any other structure of
the programme would be incorrect. We must state what
actually exists; the programme must contain what is absolutely irrefutable, what has been established in fact. Only
then will it be a Marxist programme.
Theoretically, Comrade Bukharin understands this perfectly and says that the programme must be concrete. But
it is one thing to understand and another to act upon this
understanding. Comrade Bukharin’s concreteness is a bookish description of finance capitalism. In reality we have
heterogeneous phenomena to deal with. In every agricultural
gubernia there is free competition side by side with monopoly industry. Nowhere in the world has monopoly capitalism
existed in a whole series of branches without free competition, nor will it exist. To write of such a system is to write
of a system which is false and removed from reality. If
Marx said of manufacture that it was a superstructure on
mass small production, 33 imperialism and finance capitalism
are a superstructure on the old capitalism. If its top is destroyed, the old capitalism is exposed. To maintain that
there is such a thing as integral imperialism without the old
capitalism is merely making the wish father to the thought.
This is a natural mistake, one very easily committed.
And if we had an integral imperialism before us, which had
entirely altered capitalism, our task would have been a
hundred thousand times easier. It would have resulted in
a system in which everything would be subordinated to finance
capital alone. It would then only have remained to remove
the top and to transfer what remained to the proletariat.
That would have been extremely agreeable, but it is not so
in reality. In reality the development is such that we have
to act in an entirely different way. Imperialism is a superstructure on capitalism. When it collapses, we find ourselves
dealing with the destruction of the top and the exposure
of the foundation. That is why our programme, if it is to
be a correct one, must state what actually exists. There is
the old capitalism, which in a number of branches has grown
to imperialism. Its tendencies are exclusively imperialist.
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169
Fundamental questions can be examined only from the point
of view of imperialism. There is not a single major question
of home or foreign policy which could be settled in any way
except from the point of view of this tendency. This is not
what the programme now speaks about. In reality, there
exists a vast subsoil of the old capitalism. There is the superstructure of imperialism, which led to the war, and from
this war followed the beginnings of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. This is a phase you cannot escape. This fact is
characteristic of the very rate of development of the proletarian revolution throughout the world, and will remain
a fact for many years to come.
West-European revolutions will perhaps proceed more
smoothly; nevertheless, very many years will be required
for the reorganisation of the whole world, for the reorganisation of the majority of the countries. And this means that
during the present transition period, we cannot escape this
mosaic reality. We cannot cast aside this patchwork reality,
however inelegant it may be; we cannot cast away one bit
of it. If the programme were drawn up otherwise than it
has been drawn up, it would be a wrong programme.
We say that we have arrived at the dictatorship. But we
must know how we arrived at it. The past keeps fast hold
of us, grasps us with a thousand tentacles, and does not allow
us to take a single forward step, or compels us to take these
steps badly in the way we are taking them. And we say that
for the situation we are arriving at to be understood, it must
be stated how we proceeded and what led us to the socialist
revolution. We were led to it by imperialism, by capitalism
in its early commodity production forms. All this must be
understood, because it is only by reckoning with reality
that we can solve such problems as, let us say, our attitude
towards the middle peasants. And how is it, indeed, that there
is such a category as a middle peasant in the era of purely
imperialist capitalism? It did not exist even in countries
that were simply capitalist. If we are to solve the problem
of our attitude towards this almost medieval phenomenon
(the middle peasants) purely from the point of view of imperialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, we shall
be absolutely unable to make ends meet, and we shall land
in many difficulties. But if we are to change our attitude
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V. I. L E N I N
towards the middle peasant—then also have the goodness
to say in the theoretical part where he came from and what
he is. He is a small commodity producer. And this is the
ABC of capitalism, of which we must speak, because we have
not yet grown out of it. To brush this aside and say, “Why
should we study the ABC when we have studied finance
capitalism?” would be highly frivolous.
I have to say the same thing about the national question.
Here too the wish is father to the thought with Comrade
Bukharin. He says that we must not recognise the right of
nations to self-determination. A nation means the bourgeoisie together with the proletariat. And are we, the proletarians, to recognise the right to self-determination of the
despised bourgeoisie? That is absolutely incompatible!
Pardon me, it is compatible with what actually exists. If
you eliminate this, the result will be sheer fantasy. You
refer to the process of differentiation which is taking place
within the nations, the process of separation of the proletariat from the bourgeoisie. But let us see how this differentiation will proceed.
Take, for instance, Germany, the model of an advanced
capitalist country whose organisation of capitalism, finance
capitalism, was superior to that of America. She was inferior in many other respects, in technical development and
production and in the political sphere, but in respect of the
organisation of finance capitalism, in respect of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism, Germany was superior to America. She is a model,
it would seem. But what is taking place there? Has the
German proletariat become differentiated from the bourgeoisie? No! It was reported that the majority of the workers
are opposed to Scheidemann in only a few of the large towns.
But how did this come about? It was owing to the alliance
between the Spartacists and the thrice-accursed German
Menshevik-Independents, who make a muddle of everything
and want to wed the system of workers’ councils to a Constituent Assembly! And this is what is taking place in that
very Germany! And she, mark you, is an advanced country.
Comrade Bukharin says, “Why do we need the right of
nations to self-determination?” I must repeat what I said
opposing him in the summer of 1917, when he proposed to
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171
delete the minimum programme and to leave only the maximum programme. 34 I then retorted, “Don’t halloo until
you’re out of the wood.” When we have conquered power,
and even then only after waiting a while, we shall do this. 35
We have conquered power, we have waited a while, and now
I am willing to do it. We have gone directly into socialist
construction, we have beaten off the first assault that threatened us—now it will be in place. The same applies to the
right of nations to self-determination. “I want to recognise
only the right of the working classes to self-determination,”
says Comrade Bukharin. That is to say, you want to recognise
something that has not been achieved in a single country
except Russia. That is ridiculous.
Look at Finland; she is a democratic country, more
developed, more cultured than we are. In Finland a process
of separation, of the differentiation of the proletariat is
taking a specific course, far more painful than was the case
with us. The Finns have experienced the dictatorship of
Germany; they are now experiencing the dictatorship of
the Allied powers. But thanks to the fact that we have
recognised the right of nations to self-determination, the
process of differentiation has been facilitated there. I very well
recall the scene when, at Smolny, I handed the act to Svinhufvud 36 —which in Russian means “pighead”—the representative of the Finnish bourgeoisie, who played the part
of a hangman. He amiably shook my hand, we exchanged
compliments. How unpleasant that was! But it had to be
done, because at that time the bourgeoisie were deceiving
the people, were deceiving the working people by alleging
that the Muscovites, the chauvinists, the Great Russians,
wanted to crush the Finns. It had to be done.
Yesterday, was it not necessary to do the same thing in
relation to the Bashkirian Republic? 37 When Comrade Bukharin said, “We can recognise this right in some cases”, I
even wrote down that he had included in the list the Hottentots, the Bushmen and the Indians. Hearing this enumeration,
I thought, how is it that Comrade Bukharin has forgotten
a small tribe, the Bashkirs? There are no Bushmen in Russia, nor have I heard that the Hottentots have laid claim to
an autonomous republic, but we have Bashkirs, Kirghiz
and a number of other peoples, and to these we cannot deny
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recognition. We cannot deny it to a single one of the peoples
living within the boundaries of the former Russian Empire.
Let us even assume that the Bashkirs have overthrown the
exploiters and we have helped them to do so. This is possible
only when a revolution has fully matured, and it must
be done cautiously, so as not to retard by one’s interference
that very process of the differentiation of the proletariat
which we ought to expedite. What, then, can we do in relation to such peoples as the Kirghiz, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks,
the Turkmen, who to this day are under the influence of
their mullahs? Here, in Russia, the population, having had
a long experience of the priests, helped us to overthrow them.
But you know how badly the decree on civil marriage is
still being put into effect. Can we approach these peoples
and tell them that we shall overthrow their exploiters? We
cannot do this, because they are entirely subordinated to
their mullahs. In such cases we have to wait until the given
nation develops, until the differentiation of the proletariat
from the bourgeois elements, which is inevitable, has taken
place.
Comrade Bukharin does not want to wait. He is possessed
by impatience: “Why should we? When we have ourselves
overthrown the bourgeoisie, proclaimed Soviet power and
the dictatorship of the proletariat, why should we act thus?”
This has the effect of a rousing appeal, it contains an
indication of our path, but if we were to proclaim only
this in our programme, it would not be a programme, but
a proclamation. We may proclaim Soviet power, and the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and express the contempt for
the bourgeoisie they deserve a thousand times over, but in
the programme we must write just what actually exists
with the greatest precision. And then our programme will
be incontrovertible.
We hold a strictly class standpoint. What we are writing
in the programme is a recognition of what has actually taken
place since the time we wrote of the self-determination of
nations in general. At that time there were still no proletarian republics. It was when they appeared, and only as they
appeared, that we were able to write what is written here:
“A federation of states organised after the Soviet type.”
The Soviet type is not yet Soviets as they exist in Russia,
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but the Soviet type is becoming international. And this is
all we can say. To go farther, one step farther, one hair’s
breadth farther, would be wrong, and therefore unsuitable
for a programme.
We say that account must be taken of the stage reached
by the given nation on its way from medievalism to bourgeois
democracy, and from bourgeois democracy to proletarian
democracy. That is absolutely correct. All nations have the
right to self-determination—there is no need to speak
specially of the Hottentots and the Bushmen. The vast
majority, most likely nine-tenths of the population of the
earth, perhaps 95 per cent, come under this description,
since all countries are on the way from medievalism to
bourgeois democracy or from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy. This is an absolutely inevitable course.
More cannot be said, because it would be wrong, because
it would not be what actually exists. To reject the selfdetermination of nations and insert the self-determination of
the working people would be absolutely wrong, because this
manner of settling the question does not reckon with the
difficulties, with the zigzag course taken by differentiation
within nations. In Germany it is not proceeding in the same
way as in our country—in certain respects more rapidly,
and in other respects in a slower and more sanguinary way.
Not a single party in our country accepted so monstrous an
idea as a combination of workers’ councils and a Constituent
Assembly. And yet we have to live side by side with these
nations. Now Scheidemann’s party is already saying that we
want to conquer Germany. That is of course ridiculous,
nonsensical. But the bourgeoisie have their own interests
and their own press, which is shouting this to the whole
world in hundreds of millions of copies; Wilson, too, is supporting this in his own interests. The Bolsheviks, they
declare, have a large army, and they want, by means of conquest, to implant their Bolshevism in Germany. The best
people in Germany—the Spartacists—told us that the German
workers are being incited against the Communists; look,
they are told, how bad things are with the Bolsheviks! And
we cannot say that things with us are very good. And so our
enemies in Germany influence the people with the argument
that the proletarian revolution in Germany would result
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V. I. L E N I N
in the same disorders as in Russia. Our disorders are a protracted illness. We are contending with desperate difficulties
in creating the proletarian dictatorship in our country. As
long as the bourgeoisie, or the petty bourgeoisie, or even part
of the German workers, are under the influence of this bugbear—“the Bolsheviks want to establish their system by
force”—so long will the formula “the self-determination
of the working people” not help matters. We must arrange
things so that the German traitor-socialists will not be able
to say that the Bolsheviks are trying to impose their universal
system, which, as it were, can be brought into Berlin on Red
Army bayonets. And this is what may happen if the principle of the self-determination of nations is denied.
Our programme must not speak of the self-determination
of the working people, because that would be wrong. It
must speak of what actually exists. Since nations are at
different stages on the road from medievalism to bourgeois
democracy and from bourgeois democracy to proletarian
democracy, this thesis of our programme is absolutely correct. With us there have been very many zigzags on this
road. Every nation must obtain the right to self-determination, and that will make the self-determination of the working people easier. In Finland the process of separation of
the proletariat from the bourgeoisie is remarkably clear,
forceful and deep. At any rate, things will not proceed there
as they do in our country. If we were to declare that we do
not recognise any Finnish nation, but only the working people,
that would be sheer nonsense. We cannot refuse to recognise
what actually exists; it will itself compel us to recognise
it. The demarcation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is proceeding in different countries in their own specific
ways. Here we must act with utmost caution. We must be
particularly cautious with regard to the various nations,
for there is nothing worse than lack of confidence on the part
of a nation. Self-determination of the proletariat is proceeding
among the Poles. Here are the latest figures on the composition
of the Warsaw Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. 38 Polish traitor-socialists—333, Communists—297. This shows that,
according to our revolutionary calendar, October in that
country is not very far off. It is somewhere about August or
September 1917. But, firstly, no decree has yet been issued
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stating that all countries must live according to the Bolshevik revolutionary calendar; and even if it were issued, it
would not be observed. And, secondly, the situation at present is such that the majority of the Polish workers, who are
more advanced than ours and more cultured, share the standpoint of social-defencism, social-patriotism. We must
wait. We cannot speak here of the self-determination of
the working people. We must carry on propaganda in behalf
of this differentiation. This is what we are doing, but there
is not the slightest shadow of doubt that we must recognise
the self-determination of the Polish nation now. That is
clear. The Polish proletarian movement is taking the same
course as ours, towards the dictatorship of the proletariat,
but not in the same way as in Russia. And there the workers
are being intimidated by statements to the effect that the
Muscovites, the Great Russians, who have always oppressed
the Poles, want to carry their Great-Russian chauvinism
into Poland in the guise of communism. Communism cannot
be imposed by force. When I said to one of the best comrades
among the Polish Communists, “You will do it in a different
way”, he replied, “No, we shall do the same thing, but
better than you.” To such an argument I had absolutely no
objections. They must be given the opportunity of fulfilling
a modest wish—to create a better Soviet power than ours.
We cannot help reckoning with the fact that things there are
proceeding in rather a peculiar way, and we cannot say:
“Down with the right of nations to self-determination! We
grant the right of self-determination only to the working
people.” This self-determination proceeds in a very complex
and difficult way. It exists nowhere but in Russia, and, while
foreseeing every stage of development in other countries,
we must decree nothing from Moscow. That is why this proposal is unacceptable in principle.
I now pass to the other points which I am to deal with
in accordance with the plan we have drawn up. I have given
the first place to the question of small proprietors and middle
peasants. In this respect, Clause 47 states:
“With regard to the middle peasants, the policy of the Russian
Communist Party is to draw them into the work of socialist construction gradually and systematically. The Party sets itself the task of
separating them from the kulaks, of winning them to the side of the
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V. I. L E N I N
working class by carefully attending to their needs, by combating
their backwardness with ideological weapons and under no circumstances
with measures of suppression, and by striving in all cases where
their vital interests are concerned to come to practical agreements
with them, making concessions to them in determining the methods
of carrying out socialist reforms.”
It seems to me that here we are formulating what the
founders of socialism have frequently said regarding the
middle peasants. The only defect of this clause is that it is not
sufficiently concrete. We could hardly give more in a programme But it is not only questions of programme we must
discuss at the Congress, and we must give profound, thriceprofound consideration to the question of the middle peasants. We have information to the effect that in the revolts
which have occurred in some places, a general plan is clearly
discernible, and that this plan is obviously connected with
the military plan of the whiteguards, who have decided on
a general offensive in March and on the organisation of
a number of revolts. In the presidium of the Congress there is
a draft of an appeal in the name of the Congress, which will
be reported to you. 39 These revolts show as clear as can be
that the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and a part of the
Mensheviks—in Bryansk it was the Mensheviks who worked
to provoke the revolt—are acting as actual agents of the
whiteguards. A general offensive of the whiteguards, revolts
in the villages, the interruption of railway traffic—perhaps
it will be possible to overthrow the Bolsheviks in this way?
Here the role of the middle peasants stands out especially
clearly, forcibly and insistently. At the Congress we must
not only lay particular stress on our accommodating attitude
towards the middle peasants, but also think over a number
of measures, as concrete as possible, which will directly
give at least something to the middle peasants. These measures are absolutely essential for self-preservation and for
the struggle against all our enemies; they know that the
middle peasant vacillates between us and them and they are
endeavouring to win him away from us. Our position is now
such that we possess vast reserves. We know that both the
Polish and the Hungarian revolutions are growing, and very
rapidly. These revolutions will furnish us with proletarian
reserves, will ease our situation and will to a very large ex-
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tent reinforce our proletarian base, which is weak. This may
happen in the next few months, but we do not know just
when. You know that an acute moment has now come and
therefore the question of the middle peasants now assumes
tremendous practical importance.
Further, I should like to dwell on the question of co-operation—that is Clause 48 of our programme. To a certain extent
this clause has become obsolete. When we were drafting it
in the commission, co-operatives existed in our country,
but there were no consumers’ communes; a few days later,
however, the decree on the merging of all forms of co-operatives into a single consumers’ commune was issued. I do not
know whether this decree has been published and whether
the majority of those here present are acquainted with it.
If not, it will be published tomorrow or the day after. In
this respect, this clause is already out of date, but it nevertheless appears to me that it is necessary, for we all know very
well that it is a pretty long way from decrees to fulfilment.
We have been toiling and moiling over the co-operatives
since April 1918, and although we have achieved considerable
success, it is not yet a decisive success. We have at times succeeded in organising the population in the co-operatives
to such an extent that in many of the uyezds 98 per cent of
the rural population are already so organised. But these cooperatives, which existed in capitalist society, are saturated
with the spirit of bourgeois society, and are headed by Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, by bourgeois experts.
We have not yet been able to establish our authority over
them, and here our task remains unaccomplished. Our
decree is a step forward in that it creates consumers’
communes; it orders that all forms of co-operation all over
Russia shall be merged. But this decree, too, even if we
carry it into effect entirely, leaves the autonomous sections
of workers’ co-operatives within the future consumers’
communes, because representatives of the workers’ co-operatives who have a practical knowledge of the matter told us,
and proved it, that the workers’ co-operatives, as a more
highly developed organisation, should be preserved, since
their operations are essential. There were quite a few differences and disputes within our Party over the question of
co-operation; there was friction between the Bolsheviks in
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the co-operatives and the Bolsheviks in the Soviets. In
principle, it seems to me that the question should undoubtedly be settled in the sense that this apparatus, the only
one for which capitalism paved the way among the people,
the only one operating among a rural population still at
the level of primitive capitalism, must be preserved at all
costs; it must be developed and must not, under any circumstances be discarded. The task here is a difficult one because
in the majority of cases the leaders of the co-operatives are
bourgeois specialists, very frequently real whiteguards. Hence
the hatred for them, a legitimate hatred, hence the fight
against them. But it must, of course, be conducted skilfully:
we must put a stop to the counter-revolutionary attempts
of the co-operators, but this must not be a struggle against
the apparatus of the co-operatives. While getting rid of the
counter-revolutionary leaders, we must establish our authority over the apparatus itself. Here our aim is exactly the
same as it is in the case of the bourgeois experts, which is
another question I should like to refer to.
The question of the bourgeois experts is provoking quite
a lot of friction and divergences of opinion. When I recently
had occasion to speak to the Petrograd Soviet, among the
written questions submitted to me there were several devoted
to the question of rates of pay. I was asked whether it is
permissible in a socialist republic to pay as much as 3,000
rubles. We have, in fact, included this question in the programme, because dissatisfaction on these grounds has gone
rather far. The question of the bourgeois experts has arisen
in the army, in industry, in the co-operatives, everywhere.
It is a very important question of the period of transition
from capitalism to communism. We shall be able to build
up communism only when, with the means provided by bourgeois science and technology, we make it more accessible
to the people. There is no other way of building a communist
society. But in order to build it in this way, we must take
the apparatus from the bourgeoisie, we must enlist all these
experts in the work. We have intentionally explained this
question in detail in the programme in order to have it
settled radically. We are perfectly aware of the effects of
Russia’s cultural underdevelopment, of what it is doing to
Soviet power—which in principle has provided an immensely
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higher proletarian democracy, which has created a model
of such democracy for the whole world—how this lack of
culture is reducing the significance of Soviet power and
reviving bureaucracy. The Soviet apparatus is accessible to
all the working people in word, but actually it is far from
being accessible to all of them, as we all know. And not
because the laws prevent it from being so, as was the case
under the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, our laws assist in
this respect. But in this matter laws alone are not enough.
A vast amount of educational, organisational and cultural
work is required; this cannot be done rapidly by legislation
but demands a vast amount of work over a long period. This
question of the bourgeois experts must be settled quite definitely at this Congress. The settlement of the question will
enable the comrades, who are undoubtedly following this
Congress attentively, to lean on its authority and to realise
what difficulties we are up against. It will help those comrades
who come up against this question at every step to take part
at least in propaganda work.
The comrades here in Moscow who are representing the
Spartacists at the Congress told us that in western Germany,
where industry is most developed, and where the influence of
the Spartacists among the workers is greatest, engineers
and managers in very many of the large enterprises would
come to the Spartacists, although the Spartacists have not
yet been victorious there, and say, “We shall go with you.”
That was not the case in our country. Evidently, there the
higher cultural level of the workers, the greater proletarianisation of the engineering personnel, and perhaps a number
of other causes of which we do not know, have created relations which differ somewhat from ours.
At any rate, here we have one of the chief obstacles to
further progress. We must immediately, without waiting
for the support of other countries, immediately, at this
very moment develop our productive forces. We cannot do
this without the bourgeois experts. That must be said once
and for all. Of course, the majority of these experts have
a thoroughly bourgeois outlook. They must be placed in an
environment of comradely collaboration, of worker commissars and of communist nuclei; they must be so placed that
they cannot break out; but they must be given the opportu-
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V. I. L E N I N
nity of working in better conditions than they did under
capitalism, since this group of people, which has been trained
by the bourgeoisie, will not work otherwise. To compel
a whole section of the population to work under coercion is
impossible—that we know very well from experience. We can
compel them not to take an active part in counter-revolution,
we can intimidate them so as to make them dread to respond
to the appeals of the whiteguards. In this respect the Bolsheviks act energetically. This can be done, and this we are
doing adequately. This we have all learned to do. But it is
impossible in this way to compel a whole section to work.
These people are accustomed to do cultural work, they advanced it within the framework of the bourgeois system, that
is, they enriched the bourgeoisie with tremendous material
acquisitions, but gave them to the proletariat in infinitesimal
doses—nevertheless they did advance culture, that was their
job. As they see the working class promoting organised and
advanced sections, which not only value culture but also
help to convey it to the people, they are changing their
attitude towards us. When a doctor sees that the proletariat
is arousing the working people to independent activity in
fighting epidemics, his attitude towards us completely
changes. We have a large section of such bourgeois doctors,
engineers, agronomists and co-operators, and when they see in
practice that the proletariat is enlisting more and more
people to this cause, they will be conquered morally, and
not merely be cut off from the bourgeoisie politically. Our
task will then become easier. They will then of themselves
be drawn into our apparatus and become part of it. To achieve
this, sacrifices are necessary. To pay even two thousand
million for this is a trifle. To fear this sacrifice would be
childish, for it would mean that we do not comprehend the
tasks before us.
The chaos in our transport, the chaos in industry and
agriculture are undermining the very life of the Soviet Republic. Here we must resort to the most energetic measures,
straining every nerve of the country to the utmost. We must
not practise a policy of petty pinpricks with regard to the
experts. These experts are not the servitors of the exploiters,
they are active cultural workers, who in bourgeois society
served the bourgeoisie, and of whom all socialists all over
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181
the world said that in a proletarian society they would serve
us. In this transition period we must accord them the best
possible conditions of life. That will be the best policy.
That will be the most economical management. Otherwise,
while saving a few hundred millions, we may lose so much
that no sum will be sufficient to restore what we have lost.
When we discussed the question of rates of pay with the
Commissar for Labour, Schmidt, he mentioned facts like
these. He said that in the matter of equalising wages we have
done more than any bourgeois state has done anywhere, or
can do in scores of years. Take the pre-war rates of pay:
a manual labourer used to get one ruble a day, twenty-five
rubles a month, while an expert got five hundred rubles
a month, not counting those who were paid hundreds of thousands of rubles. The expert used to receive twenty times more
than the worker. Our present rates of pay vary from six
hundred rubles to three thousand rubles—only five times
more. We have done a great deal towards equalising the rates.
Of course, we are now overpaying experts, but to pay them
a little more for giving us their knowledge is not only worth
while, but necessary and theoretically indispensable. In
my opinion, this question is dealt with in sufficient detail
in the programme. It must be particularly stressed. Not
only must it be settled here in principle, but we must see
to it that every delegate to the Congress, on returning to
his locality, should, in his report to his organisation and in
all his activities, secure its execution.
We have already succeeded in bringing about a thorough
change of attitude among the vacillating intellectuals. Yesterday we were talking about legalising the petty-bourgeois
parties, but today we are arresting the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries; by this switching back and forth
we are applying a very definite system. A consistent and
very firm line runs through these changes of policy, namely,
to cut off counter-revolution and to utilise the cultural
apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The Mensheviks are the worst
enemies of socialism, because they clothe themselves in
a proletarian disguise; but the Mensheviks are a non-proletarian group. In this group there is only an insignificant proletarian upper layer, while the group itself consists of petty
intellectuals. This group is coming over to our side. We shall
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V. I. L E N I N
take it over wholly, as a group. Every time they come to
us, we say, “Welcome!” With every one of these vacillations,
part of them come over to us. This was the case with the
Mensheviks and the Novaya Zhizn people and with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries; this will be the case with all these
vacillators, who will long continue to get in our way, whine
and desert one camp for the other—you cannot do anything
with them. But through all these vacillations we shall be
enlisting groups of cultured intellectuals into the ranks of
Soviet workers, and we shall cut off those elements that continue to support the whiteguards.
The next question which, according to the division of
subjects, falls to my share is the question of bureaucracy
and of enlisting the broad mass of the people in Soviet work.
We have been hearing complaints about bureaucracy for
a long time; the complaints are undoubtedly well founded.
We have done what no other state in the world has done in
the fight against bureaucracy. The apparatus which was a thoroughly bureaucratic and bourgeois apparatus of oppression,
and which remains such even in the freest of bourgeois
republics, we have destroyed to its very foundations. Take,
for example, the courts. Here, it is true, the task was easier;
we did not have to create a new apparatus, because anybody
can act as a judge basing himself on the revolutionary sense
of justice of the working classes. We have still by no means
completed the work in this field but in a number of respects
we have made the courts what they should be. We have created
bodies on which not only men, but also women, the most
backward and conservative section of the population, can be
made to serve without exception.
The employees in the other spheres of government are more
hardened bureaucrats. The task here is more difficult. We
cannot live without this apparatus; every branch of government creates a demand for such an apparatus. Here we are
suffering from the fact that Russia was not sufficiently
developed as a capitalist country. Germany, apparently,
will suffer less from this, because her bureaucratic apparatus
passed through an extensive school, which sucks people dry
but compels them to work and not just wear out armchairs,
as happens in our offices. We dispersed these old bureaucrats,
shuffled them and then began to place them in new posts.
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The tsarist bureaucrats began to join the Soviet institutions
and practise their bureaucratic methods, they began to assume the colouring of Communists and, to succeed better
in their careers, to procure membership cards of the Russian Communist Party. And so, they have been thrown out
of the door but they creep back in through the window.
What makes itself felt here most is the lack of cultured
forces. These bureaucrats may be dismissed, but they cannot
be re-educated all at once. Here we are confronted chiefly
with organisational, cultural and educational problems.
We can fight bureaucracy to the bitter end, to a complete
victory, only when the whole population participates in the
work of government. In the bourgeois republics not only is
this impossible, but the law itself prevents it. The best of
the bourgeois republics, no matter how democratic they
may be, have thousands of legal hindrances which prevent
the working people from participating in the work of government. What we have done, was to remove these hindrances,
but so far we have not reached the stage at which the working
people could participate in government. Apart from the
law, there is still the level of culture, which you cannot subject to any law. The result of this low cultural level is that
the Soviets, which by virtue of their programme are organs
of government by the working people, are in fact organs of
government for the working people by the advanced section
of the proletariat, but not by the working people as a whole.
Here we are confronted by a problem which cannot be
solved except by prolonged education. At present this task
is an inordinately difficult one for us, because, as I have
had frequent occasion to say, the section of workers who
are governing is inordinately, incredibly small. We must
secure help. According to all indications, such a reserve is
growing up within the country. There cannot be the slightest
doubt of the existence of a tremendous thirst for knowledge
and of tremendous progress in education—mostly attained
outside the schools—of tremendous progress in educating
the working people. This progress cannot be confined within
any school framework, but it is tremendous. All indications
go to show that we shall obtain a vast reserve in the near
future, which will replace the representatives of the small
section of proletarians who have overstrained themselves
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V. I. L E N I N
in the work. But, in any case, our present situation in this
respect is extremely difficult. Bureaucracy has been defeated.
The exploiters have been eliminated. But the cultural level
has not been raised, and therefore the bureaucrats are
occupying their old positions. They can be forced to
retreat only if the proletariat and the peasants are organised
far more extensively than has been the case up to now, and
only if real measures are taken to enlist the workers
in government. You are all aware of such measures in the
case of every People’s Commissariat, and I shall not dwell
on them.
The last point I have to deal with is the question of the
leading role of the proletariat and disfranchisement. Our
Constitution recognises the precedence of the proletariat
in respect of the peasants and disfranchises the exploiters.
It was this that the pure democrats of Western Europe attacked most. We answered, and are answering, that they
have forgotten the most fundamental propositions of Marxism, they have forgotten that with them it is a case of bourgeois democracy, whereas we have passed to proletarian
democracy. There is not a single country in the world which
has done even one-tenth of what the Soviet Republic has done
in the past few months for the workers and the poor peasants
in enlisting them in the work of administering the state.
That is an absolute truth. Nobody will deny that in the matter of true, not paper, democracy, in the matter of enlisting
the workers and peasants, we have done more than has been
done or could be done by the best of the democratic republics
in hundreds of years. It was this that determined the significance of the Soviets, it was owing to this that the Soviets
have become a slogan for the proletariat of all countries.
But this in no way saves us from stumbling over the
inadequate culture of the people. We do not at all regard
the question of disfranchising the bourgeoisie from an absolute point of view, because it is theoretically quite conceivable that the dictatorship of the proletariat may suppress
the bourgeoisie at every step without disfranchising them.
This is theoretically quite conceivable. Nor do we propose
our Constitution as a model for other countries. All we say
is that whoever conceives the transition to socialism without the suppression of the bourgeoisie is not a socialist. But
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185
while it is essential to suppress the bourgeoisie as a class, it
is not essential to deprive them of suffrage and of equality.
We do not want freedom for the bourgeoisie, we do not recognise equality of exploiters and exploited, but this question
is so handled in the programme that the Constitution does
not prescribe such measures as the inequality of workers
and peasants. They were embodied in the Constitution after
they were already in actual practice. It was not even the Bolsheviks who drew up the Constitution of the Soviets; it was
drawn up to their own detriment by the Mensheviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries before the Bolshevik revolution.
They drew it up in accordance with the conditions actually
obtaining. The organisation of the proletariat proceeded much
more rapidly than the organisation of the peasants, which
fact made the workers the bulwark of the revolution and
gave them a virtual advantage. The next task is gradually
to pass from these advantages to their equalisation. Nobody
drove the bourgeoisie out of the Soviets either before or after
the October Revolution. The bourgeoisie themselves left the
Soviets.
That is how the matter stands with the question of suffrage for the bourgeoisie. It is our task to put the question
with absolute clarity. We do not in the least apologise for
our behaviour, but give an absolutely precise enumeration
of the facts as they are. As we point out, our Constitution
was obliged to introduce this inequality because the cultural
level is low and because with us organisation is weak. But we
do not make this an ideal; on the contrary, in its programme
the Party undertakes to work systematically to abolish this
inequality between the better organised proletariat and the
peasants. We shall abolish this inequality as soon as we succeed in raising the cultural level. We shall then be able to
get along without such restrictions. Even now, after some
seventeen months of revolution, these restrictions are of
very small practical importance.
These, comrades, are the main points on which I believed
it necessary to dwell in the general discussion of the programme, in order to leave their further consideration to the
debate. (Applause.)
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4
SPEECH CLOSING THE DEBATE
ON THE PARTY PROGRAMME
MARCH 19
(Applause.) Comrades, I could not divide this part of the
question with Comrade Bukharin, after preliminary consultation, in such detail as was the case with the report. Perhaps
it will prove unnecessary. I think the debate that unfolded
here revealed primarily one thing—the absence of any definite
and formulated counter-proposal. Many speakers dealt with
separate points in a desultory way, but made no counterproposals. I shall deal with the chief objections, which were
mainly directed against the preamble. Comrade Bukharin
told me that he is one of those who believe that it is possible in
the preamble to combine a description of capitalism with a
description of imperialism in such a way as to form an integral whole, but since this has not been done, we shall have
to accept the existing draft.
Many of the speakers argued—and it was particularly
emphasised by Comrade Podbelsky—that the draft presented
to you is wrong. The arguments Comrade Podbelsky advanced
were very strange indeed. For instance, he said that in Clause
1 the revolution is referred to as the revolution of such-andsuch a date, and for some reason this suggested to Comrade
Podbelsky the idea that even this revolution is numbered.
I may say that in the Council of People’s Commissars we
have to deal with numerous documents with index numbers,
and often we get a little tired of them. But why convey this
impression here? What has an index number to do with the
question? We fix the day of the holiday and celebrate it.
Can it be denied that it was precisely on October 25 that we
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187
captured power? If you were to attempt to change this in
any way, it would be artificial. If you call the revolution the
October-November Revolution, you provide a pretext for saying that it was not accomplished in one day. Of course, it was accomplished in a longer period—not in October, not in November, and not even in one year. Comrade Podbelsky took exception to the fact that one of the clauses speaks of the impending
social revolution. On these grounds he made it appear that
the programme was guilty of the crime of “offending Her
Majesty the social revolution”. Here we are in the middle
of the social revolution and yet the programme says that it
is impending! This argument is obviously groundless, because
the revolution referred to in our programme is the world
social revolution.
We are told that we approach the revolution from the
economic point of view. Should we do so or not? Many overenthusiastic comrades here went as far as to talk about a
world Economic Council, and about subordinating all the
national parties to the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party. Comrade Pyatakov almost went as far as
to say the same. (Pyatakov, from his place: “Do you think
that would be a bad thing?”) Since he now says that it would not
be a bad thing, I must reply that if there were anything like
this in the programme, there would be no need to criticise
it: the authors of such a proposal would have dug their own
graves. These over-enthusiastic comrades have overlooked
the fact that in the programme we must take our stand on
what actually exists. One of these comrades—I think it was
Sunitsa, who criticised the programme very vigorously and
said it was worthless, and so forth—one of these over-enthusiastic comrades said that he did not agree that it must contain
what actually exists, and proposed that it should contain
what does not exist. (Laughter.) I think that this argument
is so obviously false that the laughter it evokes is quite
natural. I did not say that it must contain only what actually
exists. I said that we must proceed from what has been definitely
established. We must say and prove to the proletarians and
working peasants that the communist revolution is inevitable. Did anybody here suggest that it is not necessary to
say this? Had anybody made such a suggestion, it would
have been proved to him that he was wrong. Nobody made any
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V. I. L E N I N
such suggestion, nor will anybody do so, because it is an undoubted fact that our Party came to power with the aid not
only of the communist proletariat, but also of all the peasants. Shall we confine ourselves to telling these people who
are now marching with us: “The Party’s only function is
to carry on socialist construction. The communist revolution
has been accomplished, put communism into effect.” Such
an opinion would be utterly groundless, it would be wrong
from the theoretical point of view. Our Party has absorbed
directly, and still more indirectly, millions of people who
are now beginning to understand the class struggle, to understand the transition from capitalism to communism.
It may now be said, and it would be no exaggeration at
all to do so, of course, that nowhere, in no other country,
have the working people displayed such keen interest in the
question of transforming capitalism into socialism as the
working people in our country today. Our people are giving
more thought to this than the people of any other country.
Is the Party not to give a reply to this question? We must
demonstrate scientifically how this communist revolution
will progress. All the other proposals fall short in this respect. Nobody wanted to delete it entirely. There was some
vague talk about it being possible to abbreviate it, about
not quoting from the old programme because it is wrong.
But if the old programme were wrong, how could it have
served as the basis of our activities for so many years?
Perhaps we shall have a common programme when the world
Soviet Republic is set up; by that time we shall probably
have drafted several more programmes. But it would be
premature to draft one now, when only one Soviet Republic
exists in what was formerly the Russian Empire. Even Finland, which is undoubtedly advancing towards a Soviet
Republic, has not yet reached it. And yet the Finnish people
are the most cultured of the peoples that inhabit what was
formerly the Russian Empire. Consequently, it is utterly
wrong to demand that the programme should now reflect
a finished process. It would be on a par with inserting the
demand for a world Economic Council. We ourselves have
not yet grown accustomed to this ugly word Sovnarkhoz—
Economic Council; as for foreigners, it is said that some of
them searched the railway directory, thinking that there was
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189
a station of that name. (Laughter.) We cannot dictate such
words to the whole world by means of decrees.
To be international, our programme must take into account
the class factors which are characteristic of the economy
of all countries. It is characteristic of all countries that capitalism is still developing in a great many places. This is
true of the whole of Asia, of all countries which are advancing towards bourgeois democracy; it is true of a number of
parts of Russia. For instance, Comrade Rykov, who is closely
familiar with the facts in the economic field, told us of
the new bourgeoisie which have arisen in our country. This
is true. The bourgeoisie are emerging not only from among
our Soviet government employees—only a very few can emerge
from their ranks—but from the ranks of the peasants and
handicraftsmen who have been liberated from the yoke of
the capitalist banks, and who are now cut off from railway
communication. This is a fact. How do you think you will
get round this fact? You are only fostering your own illusions, or introducing badly digested book-learning into
reality, which is far more complex. It shows that even in
Russia, capitalist commodity production is alive, operating,
developing and giving rise to a bourgeoisie, in the same way
as it does in every capitalist society.
Comrade Rykov said, “We are fighting against the bourgeoisie who are springing up in our country because the
peasant economy has not yet disappeared; this economy gives
rise to a bourgeoisie and to capitalism.” We do not have exact
figures about it, but it is beyond doubt that this is the case.
So far a Soviet Republic exists only within the boundaries
of what was formerly the Russian Empire. It is maturing and
developing in a number of countries, but it does not yet exist
in any other country. It would, therefore, be fantastic to
claim in our programme something we have not yet reached;
it would merely express a desire to escape unpleasant reality,
which shows that the birth-pangs of other countries bringing
forth socialist republics are undoubtedly more severe than
those we experienced. We found it easy because on October
27, 1917, we gave legal effect to what the peasants had demanded in the resolutions of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.
This is not the case in any other country. A Swiss comrade
and a German comrade told us that in Switzerland the
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V. I. L E N I N
peasants took up arms against the strikers as never before, and
that in Germany there is not the faintest indications in the
rural districts of the likelihood of the appearance of councils
of agricultural labourers and small peasants. In our country,
however, Soviets of Peasants’ Deputies were formed almost
over the entire country in the first few months of the revolution. We, a backward country, created them. Here a gigantic
problem arises, for which the people in the capitalist countries have not yet found a solution. Were we a model capitalist nation? Survivals of serfdom were still to be found in
this country right up to 1917. But no nation organised on
capitalist lines has yet shown how this problem can be solved
in practice. We achieved power under exceptional conditions,
when tsarist despotism stimulated a great burst of effort to
bring about a radical and rapid change; and under these
exceptional conditions we were able for several months to
rely on the support of all the peasants. This is a historical
fact. Right up to the summer of 1918, up to the time of
the formation of the Poor Peasants’ Committees, we were
holding on as a government because we enjoyed the support
of all the peasants. This is impossible in any capitalist
country. And it is this fundamental economic fact that you
forget when you talk about radically redrafting the whole
programme. Without this your programme will have no
scientific foundation.
We must take as our point of departure the universally
recognised Marxist thesis that a programme must be built
on a scientific foundation. It must explain to the people how
the communist revolution arose, why it is inevitable, what
its significance, nature, and power are, and what problems
it must solve. Our programme must be a summary for agitational purposes, a summary such as all programmes were,
such as, for instance, the Erfurt Programme 40 was. Every
clause of that programme contained material for agitators
to use in hundreds of thousands of speeches and articles.
Every clause of our programme is something that every
working man and woman must know, assimilate and understand. If they do not know what capitalism is, if they do not
understand that small peasant and handicraft economy constantly, inevitably and necessarily engenders this capitalism—
if they do not understand this, then even if they were to
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191
declare themselves Communists a hundred times and flaunt
the most radical communism, it would not be worth a brass
farthing, because we value communism only when it is
based on economic facts.
The socialist revolution will cause many changes even in
some of the advanced countries. The capitalist mode of production still exists in all parts of the world, and in many places
it still bears its less developed forms in spite of the fact that
imperialism has mobilised and concentrated finance capital.
There is not a country in the world, even the most developed,
where capitalism is to be found exclusively in its most perfect form. There is nothing like it even in Germany. When
we were collecting material for our particular assignments,
the comrade in charge of the Central Statistical Board informed us that in Germany the peasants concealed from the
Food Supply Departments 40 per cent of their surplus potatoes. Small peasant farms, which engage in free, petty trading, and petty profiteering, are still to be found in a capitalist country where capitalism has reached its full development. Such facts must not be forgotten. Of the 300,000 members
of the Party who are represented here, are there many who
fully understand this question? It would be ridiculous conceit to imagine that because we, whose good fortune it was
to draft this programme, understand all this, the entire mass
of Communists also understands it. They do not, and they
need this ABC. They need it a hundred times more than we
do, because people who have not grasped, who have not
understood what communism is and what commodity
production is, are far removed from communism. We come
across these cases of small commodity economy every day,
in every question of practical economic policy, food policy,
agricultural policy, on matters concerning the Supreme
Economic Council. And yet we are told that we ought not
to speak about it in the programme! If we heeded this
advice we would only show that we are incapable of solving
this problem, and that the success of the revolution in our
country is due to exceptional circumstances.
Comrades from Germany visit us to study the forms of
the socialist system. And we must act in such a way as to
prove to our comrades from abroad that we are strong, to
enable them to see that in our revolution we are not in the
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V. I. L E N I N
least exceeding the bounds of reality, and to provide them
with material that will be absolutely irrefutable. It would
be absurd to set up our revolution as the ideal for all countries, to imagine that it has made a number of brilliant discoveries and has introduced a heap of socialist innovations.
I have not heard anybody make this claim and I assert that
we shall not hear anybody make it. We have acquired practical experience in taking the first steps towards destroying
capitalism in a country where specific relations exist between
the proletariat and the peasants. Nothing more. If we behave
like the frog in the fable and become puffed up with conceit,
we shall only make ourselves the laughing-stock of the world,
we shall be mere braggarts.
We educated the party of the proletariat with the aid
of the Marxist programme, and the tens of millions of working people in our country must be educated in the same way.
We have assembled here as ideological leaders and we must
say to the people: “We educated the proletariat, and in doing
so we always took our stand first and foremost on an exact
economic analysis.” This cannot be done by means of a manifesto. The manifesto of the Third International is an appeal,
a proclamation, it calls attention to the tasks that confront
us, it is an appeal to the people’s sentiments. Take the trouble
to prove scientifically that you have an economic basis,
and that you are not building on sand. If you cannot do that,
do not undertake to draw up a programme. To do it, we must
necessarily review what we have lived through in these
fifteen years. Fifteen years ago we said that we were advancing towards the social revolution, and now we have arrived;
does that fact weaken our position? On the contrary, it reinforces and strengthens it. It all amounts to this, that capitalism is developing into imperialism, and imperialism leads
to the beginning of the socialist revolution. It is tedious and
lengthy, and not a single capitalist country has yet gone
through this process, but it is necessary to deal with this in
the programme.
That is why the theoretical arguments that have been
levelled against this hold no water. I have no doubt that
if we were to set ten or twenty writers, who are well able
to expound their ideas, to work for three or four hours a
day, they would, in the course of a month, draw up a better
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
193
and more integral programme. But to demand that this
should be done in a day or two, as Comrade Podbelsky does,
is ridiculous. We worked for more than a day or two, or even
a couple of weeks. I repeat that if it were possible to select
a commission of thirty persons and set them to work several
hours a day for a month, and moreover, not allow them to
be disturbed by telephone calls, there can be no doubt that
they would produce a programme five times better than this
one. But nobody here has disputed essentials. A programme
which says nothing about the fundamentals of commodity
economy and capitalism will not be a Marxist international
programme. To be international it is not enough for it to
proclaim a world Soviet republic, or the abolition of nations,
as Comrade Pyatakov did when he said: “We don’t want any
nations. What we want is the union of all proletarians.”
This is splendid, of course, and eventually it will come about,
but at an entirely different stage of communist development.
Comrade Pyatakov said in a patronising tone: “You were
backward in 1917, but you have made progress.” We made
progress when we put into the programme something that
began to conform to reality. When we said that nations advance from bourgeois democracy to proletarian government,
we stated what was a fact, although in 1917 it was merely
an expression of what you desired.
When we establish with the Spartacists that complete
comradely confidence needed for united communism, the
comradely confidence that is maturing day by day, and
which, perhaps, will come into being in a few months’
time, we shall record it in the programme. But to proclaim
it when it does not yet exist, would mean dragging them into
something for which their own experience has not yet prepared them. We say that the Soviet type has acquired international significance. Comrade Bukharin mentioned the
Shop Stewards’ Committees in Britain. These are not quite
Soviets. They are developing but they are still in the embryonic stage. When they burst into full bloom, we shall “see
what happens”. But the argument that we are presenting
Russian Soviets to the British workers is beyond all criticism.
I must now deal with the question of self-determination
of nations. Our criticism has served to exaggerate the importance of this question. The defect in our criticism was
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V. I. L E N I N
that it attached special significance to this question, which,
in substance, is of less than secondary importance in the
programme’s general structure, in the sum total of programme demands.
While Comrade Pyatakov was speaking I was amazed and
asked myself what it was, a debate on the programme, or a
dispute between two Organising Bureaus? When Comrade
Pyatakov said that the Ukrainian Communists act in conformity with the instructions of the Central Committee of the
R.C.P.(B.), I was not sure about the tone in which he said
it. Was it regret? I do not suspect Comrade Pyatakov of
that, but what he said was tantamount to asking what was
the good of all this self-determination when we have a splendid Central Committee in Moscow. This is a childish point of
view. The Ukraine was separated from Russia by exceptional
circumstances, and the national movement did not take
deep root there. Whatever there was of such a movement
the Germans killed. This is a fact, but an exceptional fact.
Even as regards the language it is not clear whether the
Ukrainian language today is the language of the common people or not. The mass of working people of the other nations
greatly distrusted the Great Russians whom they regarded
as a kulak and oppressor nation. That is a fact. A Finnish
representative told me that among the Finnish bourgeoisie,
who hated the Great Russians, voices are to be heard saying:
“The Germans proved to be more savage brutes, the Entente
proved to be more savage, we had better have the Bolsheviks.” This is the tremendous victory we have gained over
the Finnish bourgeoisie in the national question. This does
not in the least prevent us from fighting it as our class enemy
and from choosing the proper methods for the purpose. The
Soviet Republic, which has been established in the country
where tsarism formerly oppressed Finland, must declare that
it respects the right of nations to independence. We concluded
a treaty with the short-lived Red Finnish Government and
agreed to certain territorial concessions, to which I heard
quite a number of utterly chauvinistic objections, such as:
“There are excellent fisheries there, and you have surrendered
them.” These are the kind of objections which induce me to
say, “Scratch some Communists and you will find GreatRussian chauvinists.”
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195
I think that the case of Finland, as well as of the Bashkirs,
shows that in dealing with the national question one cannot
argue that economic unity should be effected under all circumstances. Of course, it is necessary! But we must endeavour to secure it by propaganda, by agitation, by a voluntary alliance. The Bashkirs distrust the Great Russians
because the Great Russians are more cultured and have utilised their culture to rob the Bashkirs. That is why the term
Great Russian is synonymous with the terms “oppressor”,
“rogue” to Bashkirs in those remote places. This must be
taken into account, it must be combated, but it will be a
lengthy process. It cannot be eliminated by a decree. We
must be very cautious in this matter. Exceptional caution
must be displayed by a nation like the Great Russians,
who earned the bitter hatred of all the other nations; we have
only just learned how to remedy the situation, and then,
not entirely. For instance, at the Commissariat of Education,
or connected with it, there are Communists, who say that
our schools are uniform schools, and therefore don’t dare to
teach in any language but Russian. In my opinion, such a
Communist is a Great-Russian chauvinist. Many of us harbour such sentiments and they must be combated.
That is why we must tell the other nations that we are
out-and-out internationalists and are striving for the
voluntary alliance of the workers and peasants of all nations.
This does not preclude wars in the least. War is another question, and-arises out of the very nature of imperialism. If
we are fighting Wilson, and Wilson uses a small nation as
his tool, we say that we shall oppose that tool. We have
never said anything different. We have never said that a
socialist republic can exist without military forces. War
may be necessary under certain circumstances. But at present, the essence of the question of the self-determination of
nations is that different nations are advancing in the same
historical direction, but by very different zigzags and bypaths, and that the more cultured nations are obviously
proceeding in a way that differs from that of the less cultured
nations. Finland advanced in a different way. Germany is
advancing in a different way. Comrade Pyatakov is a thousand times right when he says that we need unity. But we
must strive for it by means of propaganda, by Party influence,
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V. I. L E N I N
by forming united trade unions. But here, too, we must
not act in a stereotyped way. If we do away with this point,
or formulate it differently, we shall be deleting the national
question from the programme. This might be done if there
were people with no specific national features. But there
are no such people, and we cannot build socialist society in
any other way.
I think, comrades, that the programme proposed here
should be accepted as a basis and then referred back to the
commission, which should be enlarged by the inclusion of
representatives of the opposition, or rather, of comrades
who have made practical proposals, and that the commission
should put forward (1) the amendments to the draft that have
been enumerated, and (2) the theoretical objections on which
no agreement can be reached. I think this will be the most
practical way of dealing with the matter, and one that will
most speedily lead to a correct decision. (Applause.)
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
197
5
WIRELESS MESSAGE OF GREETING
ON BEHALF OF THE CONGRESS TO THE GOVERNMENT
OF THE HUNGARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC 41
MARCH 22
To the Government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic,
Budapest
The Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party
sends ardent greetings to the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Our Congress is convinced that the time is not far distant
when communism will triumph all over the world. The working class of Russia is making every effort to come to your
aid. The proletariat throughout the world is watching your
struggle with intense interest and will not permit the imperialists to raise their hands against the new Soviet Republic.
Long live the world communist republic!
First published in Hungarian
in the newspaper Népszava No. 7 1 ,
March 2 5 , 1 9 1 9
First published in Russian
in 1 9 2 7
Published according to
the Russian translation
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V. I. L E N I N
6
REPORT ON WORK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
MARCH 23
(Prolonged applause.) Comrades, I must apologise for
having been unable to attend all the meetings of the committee elected by the Congress to consider the question of work in
the countryside. 42 My report will therefore be supplemented
by the speeches of comrades who have taken part in the work
of the committee from the very beginning. The committee
finally drew up theses which were turned over to a commission and which will be reported on to you. I should like to
dwell on the general significance of the question as it confronts
us following the work of the committee and as, in my opinion,
it now confronts the whole Party.
Comrades, it is quite natural that as the proletarian revolution develops we have to put in the forefront first one then
another of the most complex and important problems of
social life. It is perfectly natural that in a revolution which
affects, and is bound to affect, the deepest foundations of
life and the broadest mass of the population, not a single
party, not a single government, no matter how close it may
be to the people, can possibly embrace all aspects of life
at once. And if we now have to deal with the question of work
in the countryside, and in connection with this question to
give prominence to the position of the middle peasants,
there is nothing strange or abnormal in this from the standpoint of the development of the proletarian revolution in
general. It is natural that the proletarian revolution had to
begin with the fundamental relation between two hostile classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The principal
task was to transfer power to the working class, to secure its
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199
dictatorship, to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to deprive
them of the economic sources of their power which would
undoubtedly be a hindrance to all socialist construction in
general. Since we are acquainted with Marxism, none of us
have ever for a moment doubted the truth of the thesis that
the very economic structure of capitalist society is such that
the deciding factor in that society must be either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. We now see many former Marxists
—from the Menshevik camp, for example—who assert that
in a period of decisive struggle between the proletariat and
the bourgeoisie democracy in general can prevail. This is
what is said by the Mensheviks, who have come to a complete
agreement with the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Although it
were not the bourgeoisie themselves who create or abolish
democracy as they find most convenient for themselves!
And since that is so, there can be no question of democracy
in general at a time of acute struggle between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat. It is astonishing how rapidly these Marxists
or pseudo-Marxists—our Mensheviks, for example—expose
themselves, and how rapidly their true nature, the nature of
petty-bourgeois democrats, comes to the surface.
All his life Marx fought most of all the illusions of pettybourgeois democracy and bourgeois democracy. Marx scoffed
most of all at empty talk of freedom and equality, when
it serves as a screen for the freedom of the workers to starve
to death, or the equality between the one who sells
his labour-power and the bourgeois who allegedly freely
purchases that labour in the open market as if from an equal,
and so forth. Marx explains this in all his economic works.
It may be said that the whole of Marx’s Capital is devoted
to explaining the truth that the basic forces of capitalist society are, and must be, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat—
bourgeoisie, as the builder of this capitalist society, as its
leader, as its motive force, and the proletariat, as its gravedigger and as the only force capable of replacing it. You
can hardly find a single chapter in any of Marx’s works that
is not devoted to this. You might say that all over the world
the socialists of the Second International have vowed and
sworn to the workers time and again that they understand
this truth. But when matters reached the stage of the real
and, moreover, decisive struggle for power between the pro-
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V. I. L E N I N
letariat and the bourgeoisie we find that our Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries, as well as the leaders of the old
socialist parties all over the world, forgot this truth and
began to repeat in purely parrot fashion the philistine phrases
about democracy in general.
Attempts are sometimes made to lend these words what is
considered to be greater force by speaking of the “dictatorship
of democracy”. That is sheer nonsense. We know perfectly
well from history that the dictatorship of the democratic
bourgeoisie meant nothing but the suppression of the insurgent
workers. That has been the case ever since 1848—at any rate,
beginning no later, and isolated examples may be found even
earlier. History shows that it is precisely in a bourgeois
democracy that a most acute struggle between the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie develops extensively and freely. We have
had occasion to convince ourselves of this truth in practice.
And the measures taken by the Soviet Government since October 1917 have been distinguished by their firmness on all
fundamental questions precisely because we have never
departed from this truth and have never forgotten it. The
issue of the struggle for supremacy waged against the bourgeoisie can be settled only by the dictatorship of one class—the
proletariat. Only the dictatorship of the proletariat can defeat the bourgeoisie. Only the proletariat can overthrow
the bourgeoisie. And only the proletariat can secure the following of the people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie.
However, it by no means follows from this—and it would
be a profound mistake to think it does—that in further building communism, when the bourgeoisie have been overthrown
and political power is already in the hands of the proletariat,
we can continue to carry on without the participation of the
middle, intermediary elements.
It is natural that at the beginning of the revolution—the
proletarian revolution—the whole attention of its active
participants should be concentrated on the main and fundamental issue, the supremacy of the proletariat and the
securing of that supremacy by a victory over the bourgeoisie—
making it certain that the bourgeoisie cannot regain
power. We are well aware that the bourgeoisie still enjoy the
advantages derived from the wealth they possess in other
countries or the monetary wealth they possess, sometimes
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even in our own country. We are well aware that there are
social elements who are more experienced than proletarians
and who aid the bourgeoisie. We are well aware that the
bourgeoisie have not abandoned the idea of returning to power
and have not ceased attempting to restore their supremacy.
But that is by no means all. The bourgeoisie, who put
forward most insistently the principle “my country is wherever it is good for me”, and who, as far as money is concerned,
have always been international—the bourgeoisie internationally are still stronger than we are. Their supremacy is being
rapidly undermined, they are being confronted with such
facts as the Hungarian revolution—about which we were
happy to inform you yesterday and are today receiving confirming reports—and they are beginning to understand that
their supremacy is shaky. They no longer enjoy freedom of
action. But now, if you take into account the material means
on the world scale, we cannot help admitting that in the
material respect the bourgeoisie are at present still stronger
than we are.
That is why nine-tenths of our attention and our practical
activities were devoted, and had to be devoted, to this fundamental question—the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the power of the proletariat and the elimination of every possibility of the return of the bourgeoisie
to power. That is perfectly natural, legitimate, and unavoidable, and in this field very much has been accomplished.
Now, however, we must decide the question of other sections of the population. We must—and this was our unanimous conclusion in the agrarian committee, and on this, we
are convinced, all Party workers will agree, because we
merely summed up the results of their observations—we
must now decide the question of the middle peasants in
its totality.
Of course, there are people who, instead of studying the
course taken by our revolution, instead of giving thought
to the tasks now confronting us, instead of all this, make
every step of the Soviet government a butt for the derision
and criticism of the type we hear from these gentlemen, the
Mensheviks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. These
people have still not understood that they must make a
choice between us and the bourgeois dictatorship. We have
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displayed great patience, even indulgence, towards these
people. We shall allow them to enjoy our indulgence once
more. But in the very near future we shall set a limit to our
patience and indulgence, and if they do not make their choice,
we shall tell them in all seriousness to go to Kolchak.
(Applause.) We do not expect particularly brilliant intellectual ability from such people. (Laughter.) But it might
have been expected that after experiencing the bestialities
of Kolchak they ought to understand that we are entitled to
demand that they should choose between us and Kolchak. If
during the first few months that followed the October Revolution there were many naïve people who were stupid enough
to believe that the dictatorship of the proletariat was something transient and fortuitous, today even the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries ought to understand
that there is something logically necessary in the struggle
that is being waged because of the onslaught of the whole
international bourgeoisie.
Actually only two forces have been created—the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Whoever has not learned this from Marx, whoever
has not learned this from the works of all the great socialists,
has never been a socialist, has never understood anything
about socialism, and has only called himself a socialist.
We are allowing these people a brief period for reflection
and demand that they make their decision. I have mentioned
them because they are now saying or will say: “The Bolsheviks have raised the question of the middle peasants; they
want to make advances to them.” I am very well aware that
considerable space is given in the Menshevik press to arguments of this kind, and even far worse. We ignore such
arguments, we never attach importance to the jabber of our
adversaries. People who are still capable of running to and
fro between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat may say
what they please. We are following our own road.
Our road is determined above all by considerations of
class forces. A struggle is developing in capitalist society
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. As long as that
struggle has not ended we shall give our keenest attention
to fighting it out to the end. It has not yet been brought to
the end, although in that struggle much has already been
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accomplished. The hands of the international bourgeoisie
are no longer free; the best proof of this is that the
Hungarian proletarian revolution has taken place. It
is therefore clear that our rural organisational work has already gone beyond the limits to which it was confined when
everything was subordinated to the fundamental demand of
the struggle for power.
This development passed through two main phases. In
October 1917 we seized power together with the peasants as a
whole. This was a bourgeois revolution, inasmuch as the class
struggle in the rural districts had not yet developed. As I
have said, the real proletarian revolution in the rural districts
began only in the summer of 1918. Had we not succeeded
in stirring up this revolution our work would have been
incomplete. The first stage was the seizure of power in the
cities and the establishment of the Soviet form of government.
The second stage was one which is fundamental for all socialists and without which socialists are not socialists, namely,
to single out the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements in
the rural districts and to ally them to the urban proletariat
in order to wage the struggle against the bourgeoisie in the
countryside. This stage is also in the main completed. The
organisations we originally created for this purpose, the Poor
Peasants’ Committees, had become so consolidated that we
found it possible to replace them by properly elected Soviets,
i.e., to reorganise the village Soviets so as to make them the
organs of class rule, the organs of proletarian power in the
rural districts. Such measures as the law on socialist land
settlement and the measures for the transition to socialist
farming, which was passed not very long ago by the Central
Executive Committee and with which everybody is, of course,
familiar, sum up our experience from the point of view of
our proletarian revolution.
The main thing, the prime and basic talk of the proletarian revolution, we have already accomplished. And precisely because we have accomplished it, a more complicated
problem has come to the fore—our attitude towards the middle peasants. And whoever thinks that the prominence being
given this problem is in any way symptomatic of a weakening
of the character of our government, of a weakening of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, that it is symptomatic of a
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change, however partial, however minute, in our basic
policy, completely fails to understand the aims of the proletariat and the aims of the communist revolution. I am convinced that there are no such people in our Party. I only wanted to warn the comrades against people not belonging to the
workers’ party who will talk in this way, not because it
follows from any system of ideas, but because they merely
want to spoil things for us and to help the whiteguards—
or, to put it more simply, to incite against us the middle
peasant, who is always vacillating, who cannot help vacillating, and who will continue to vacillate for a fairly long
time to come. In order to incite the middle peasant against
us they will say, “See, they are making advances to you!
That means they have taken your revolts into account, they
are beginning to wobble”, and so on and so forth. All our
comrades must be armed against agitation of this kind. And
I am certain that they will be armed—provided we succeed
now in having this question treated from the standpoint of
the class struggle.
It is perfectly obvious that this fundamental problem—
how precisely to define the attitude of the proletariat towards
the middle peasants—is a more complex but no less urgent
problem. Comrades, from the theoretical point of view, which
has been mastered by the vast majority of the workers, this
question presents no difficulty to Marxists. I will remind
you, for instance, that in his book on the agrarian question,
written at a time when he was still correctly expounding
the teachings of Marx and was regarded as an indisputed
authority in this field, Kautsky states in connection with the
transition from capitalism to socialism that the task of a
socialist party is to neutralise the peasants, i.e., to see to it
that in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie the peasant should remain neutral and should not
be able to give active assistance to the bourgeoisie against us.
Throughout the extremely long period of the rule of the
bourgeoisie, the peasants sided with the bourgeoisie and supported their power. This will be understood if you consider
the economic strength of the bourgeoisie and the political
instruments of their rule. We cannot count on the middle
peasant coming over to our side immediately. But if we pursue a correct policy, after a time these vacillations will cease
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and the peasant will be able to come over to our
side.
It was Engels—who together with Marx laid the foundations of scientific Marxism, that is, the teachings by which
our Party has always guided itself, and particularly in time
of revolution—it was Engels who established the division
of the peasants into small peasants, middle peasants, and
big peasants, and this division holds good for most European
countries even today. Engels said, “Perhaps it will not everywhere be necessary to suppress even the big peasant by
force.” And that we might ever use force in respect of the
middle peasant (the small peasant is our friend) is a thought
that has never occurred to any sensible socialist. That is
what Engels said in 1894, a year before his death, when the
agrarian question came to the fore. 43 This point of view expresses a truth which is sometimes forgotten, but with which
we are all in theory agreed. In relation to the landowners
and the capitalists our aim is complete expropriation. But
we shall not tolerate any use of force in respect of the middle
peasants. Even in respect of the rich peasants we do not
say as resolutely as we do of the bourgeoisie—absolute expropriation of the rich peasants and the kulaks. This distinction is made in our programme. We say that the resistance of the counter-revolutionary efforts of the rich peasants
must be suppressed. That is not complete expropriation.
The basic difference in our attitude towards the bourgeoisie and the middle peasant—complete expropriation of
the bourgeoisie and an alliance with the middle peasant
who does not exploit others—this basic line is accepted by
everybody in theory. But this line is not consistently followed in practice; the people in the localities have not yet
learned to follow it. When, after having overthrown the bourgeoisie and consolidated its own power, the proletariat
started from various angles to create a new society, the
question of the middle peasant came to the fore. Not a single
socialist in the world denied that the building of communism
would take different courses in countries where large-scale
farming prevails and in countries where small-scale farming
prevails. That is an elementary truth, an ABC. And from
this truth it follows that as we approach the problems of
communist construction our principal attention must to a
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certain extent be concentrated precisely on the middle
peasant.
Much will depend on how we define our attitude towards
the middle peasant. Theoretically, that question has been
solved; but we know perfectly well from our own experience
that there is a difference between solving a problem theoretically and putting the solution into practice. We are now
directly confronted with that difference, which was so characteristic of the great French Revolution, when the French Convention launched into sweeping measures but did not possess
the necessary support to put them into effect, and did not
even know on what class to rely for the implementation of
any particular measure.
Our position is an infinitely more fortunate one. Thanks
to a whole century of development, we know on which class
we are relying. But we also know that the practical experience
of that class is extremely inadequate. The fundamental
aim was clear to the working class and the workers’ party—
to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to transfer
power to the workers. But how was that to be done? Everyone
remembers with what difficulty and at the cost of how
many mistakes we passed from workers’ control to workers’
management of industry. And yet that was work within our
own class, among the proletarians, with whom we had always
had to deal. But now we are called upon to define our attitude towards a new class, a class the urban worker does not
know. We have to determine our attitude towards a class
which has no definite and stable position. The proletariat
in the mass is in favour of socialism, the bourgeoisie in the
mass are opposed to socialism. It is easy to determine the
relations between these two classes. But when we come up
against people like the middle peasants we find that they are
a class that vacillates. The middle peasant is partly a property-owner and partly a working man. He does not exploit
other working people. For decades the middle peasant defended his position with the greatest difficulty, he suffered
the exploitation of the landowners and the capitalists, he
bore everything. Yet he is a property-owner. Our attitude
towards this vacillating class therefore presents enormous
difficulties. In the light of more than a year’s experience,
in the light of more than six months’ proletarian work in the
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rural districts, and in the light of the class differentiation
in the rural districts that has already taken place, we must
most of all beware here lest we are too hasty, lest we are inadequately theoretical, lest we regard what is in process of
being accomplished, but has not yet been realised, as having
been accomplished. In the resolution which is being proposed to you by the commission elected by the committee,
and which will be read to you by a subsequent speaker, you
will find sufficient warning against this.
From the economic point of view, it is obvious that we
must help the middle peasant. Theoretically, there is no
doubt of this. But because of our habits, our level of culture,
the inadequacy of the cultural and technical forces we are
in a position to place at the disposal of the rural districts,
and because of the helpless manner in which we often approach
the rural districts, comrades frequently resort to coercion
and thus spoil everything. Only yesterday a comrade gave
me a pamphlet entitled Instructions and Regulations on
Party Work in Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, issued by the
Nizhni-Novgorod Committee of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolsheviks), and in this pamphlet, for example, I find this
on p. 41. “The whole burden of the emergency tax decree
must be placed on the shoulders of the village kulaks and
profiteers and the middle element of the peasants generally.”44
Well, well! These people have indeed “understood”. This is
either a printer’s error—and it is impermissible that such
printer’s errors should be made—or a piece of rushed, hasty
work, which shows how dangerous all haste is in this matter.
Or—and this is the worst surmise of all, one I would not like
to make with regard to the Nizhni-Novgorod comrades—they
have simply failed to understand. It may very well be that
it is an oversight.
We have, in practice, cases like the one related by a comrade in the commission. He was surrounded by peasants,
and every one of them asked: “Tell me, am I a middle peasant or not? I have two horses and one cow.... I have two
cows and one horse”, etc. And this agitator, who tours the
uyezds, is expected to possess an infallible thermometer
with which to gauge every peasant and say whether he is a
middle peasant or not. To do that you must know the whole
history of the given peasant’s farm, his relation to higher
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and lower groups—and we cannot know that accurately.
Considerable practical ability and knowledge of local
conditions are required here, and we do not yet possess
them. You need not be ashamed to confess it; it must be
admitted frankly. We were never utopians and never imagined that we would build communist society with the
immaculate hands of immaculate Communists, born and educated in an immaculately communist society. That is a fairytale. We have to build communism out of the debris of capitalism, and only the class which has been steeled in the struggle against capitalism can do that. The proletariat, as you
are very well aware, is not free from the shortcomings and
weaknesses of capitalist society. It is fighting for socialism,
but at the same time it is fighting against its own shortcomings. The best and foremost section of the proletariat,
which carried on a desperate struggle in the cities for decades, was in a position to acquire in the course of that struggle
the culture of life in the capital and other cities, and to a
certain extent did acquire it. You know that even in advanced
countries the rural districts were condemned to ignorance.
Of course, we shall raise the level of culture in the rural
districts, but that will be the work of many, many years,
that is what our comrades everywhere are forgetting and what
is being strikingly brought home to us by every word uttered by people who come from the rural districts; not by the
intellectuals who work here, not by the officials—we have
listened to them a lot—but by people who have in practice
observed the work in the rural districts. It was these opinions
that we found particularly valuable in the agrarian committee. These opinions will be particularly valuable now—I am
convinced of that—for the whole Party Congress, for they come
not from books, and not from decrees, but from experience.
All this obliges us to work for the purpose of introducing
the greatest possible clarity into our attitude towards the
middle peasant. This is very difficult, because such clarity
does not exist in reality. Not only is this problem unsolved,
it is insoluble, if you want to solve it immediately and all
at once. There are people who say that there was no need to
write so many decrees. They blame the Soviet Government
for setting about writing decrees without knowing how they
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209
were to be put into effect. These people, as a matter of fact,
do not realise that they are sinking to the whiteguard position. If we had expected that life in the rural districts could
be completely changed by writing a hundred decrees, we
would have been absolute idiots. But if we had refrained from
indicating in decrees the road that must be followed, we
would have been traitors to socialism. These decrees, while
in practice they could not be carried into effect fully and immediately, played an important part as propaganda. While
formerly we carried on our propaganda by means of general
truths, we are now carrying on our propaganda by our work.
That is also preaching, but it is preaching by action—only
not action in the sense of the isolated sallies of some upstarts, at which we scoffed so much in the era of the anarchists and the socialism of the old type. Our decree is a call,
but not the old call “Workers, arise and overthrow the bourgeoisie!” No, it is a call to the people, it calls them to practical work. Decrees are instructions which call for practical
work on a mass scale. That is what is important. Let us assume
that decrees do contain much that is useless, much that
in practice cannot be put into effect; but they contain material for practical action, and the purpose of a decree is to
teach practical steps to the hundreds, thousands, and millions of people who heed the voice of the Soviet government.
This is a trial in practical action in the sphere of socialist
construction in the rural districts. If we treat matters in
this way we shall acquire a good deal from the sum total of
our laws, decrees, and ordinances. We shall not regard them
as absolute injunctions which must be put into effect
instantly and at all costs.
We must avoid everything that in practice may tend to
encourage individual abuses. In places careerists and adventurers have attached themselves to us like leeches, people who call themselves Communists and are deceiving us,
and who have wormed their way into our ranks because the
Communists are now in power, and because the more honest
government employees refused to come and work with us on
account of their retrograde ideas, while careerists have no
ideas, and no honesty. These people, whose only aim is to
make a career, resort in the localities to coercion, and
imagine they are doing a good thing. But in fact the result
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of this at times is that the peasants say, “Long live Soviet
power, but down with the communia!” (i.e., communism).
This is not an invention; these facts are taken from real
life, from the reports of comrades in the localities. We must
not forget what enormous damage is always caused by lack
of moderation, by all rashness, and haste.
We had to hurry and, by taking a desperate leap, to get
out of the imperialist war at any cost, for it had brought us
to the verge of collapse. We had to make most desperate
efforts to crush the bourgeoisie and the forces that were
threatening to crush us. All this was necessary, without this
we could not have triumphed. But if we were to act in the
same way towards the middle peasant it would be such idiocy, such stupidity, it would be so ruinous to our cause,
that only provocateurs could deliberately act in such a way.
The aim here must be an entirely different one. Here our
aim is not to smash the resistance of obvious exploiters, to
defeat and overthrow them—which was the aim we previously set ourselves. No, now that this main purpose has been
accomplished, more complicated problems arise. You cannot
create anything here by coercion. Coercion applied to the
middle peasants would cause untold harm. This section is a
numerous one, it consists of millions of individuals. Even
in Europe, where it nowhere reaches such numbers, where
technology and culture, urban life and railways are tremendously developed, and where it would be easiest of all to
think of such a thing, nobody, not even the most revolutionary of socialists, has ever proposed adopting measures of
coercion towards the middle peasant.
When we were taking power we relied on the support of
the peasants as a whole. At that time the aim of all the
peasants was the same—to fight the landowners. But their
prejudice against large-scale farming has remained to this
day. The peasant thinks that if there is a big farm, that
means he will again be a farm-hand. That, of course, is a
mistake. But the peasant’s idea of large-scale farming is
associated with a feeling of hatred and the memory of how
landowners used to oppress the people. That feeling still
remains, it has not yet died.
We must particularly stress the truth that here by the very
nature of the case coercive methods can accomplish nothing.
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211
The economic task here is an entirely different one; there is
no upper layer that can be cut off, leaving the foundation
and the building intact. That upper layer which in the cities
was represented by the capitalists does not exist in the villages. Here coercion would ruin the whole cause. Prolonged
educational work is required. We have to give the peasant,
who not only in our country but all over the world is a practical man and a realist, concrete examples to prove that the
“communia” is the best possible thing. Of course, nothing
will come of it if hasty individuals flit down to a village from
a city to chatter and stir up a number of intellectual-like
and at times unintellectual-like squabbles, and then quarrel
with everyone and go their way. That sometimes happens.
Instead of evoking respect, they evoke ridicule, and
deservedly so.
On this question we must say that we do encourage communes, but they must be so organised as to gain the confidence
of the peasants. And until then we are pupils of the peasants
and not their teachers. Nothing is more stupid than people
who know nothing about farming and its specific features,
rushing to the village only because they have heard of the
advantages of socialised farming, are tired of urban life and
desire to work in rural districts—it is most stupid for such
people to regard themselves as teachers of the peasants in
every respect. Nothing is more stupid than the very idea of
applying coercion in economic relations with the middle
peasant.
The aim is not to expropriate the middle peasant but to
bear in mind the specific conditions in which the peasant
lives, to learn from him methods of transition to
a better system, and not to dare to give orders! That is the
rule we have set ourselves. (General applause.) That is the
rule we have endeavoured to set forth in our draft resolution,
for in that respect, comrades, we have indeed sinned a great
deal. We are by no means ashamed to confess it. We were
inexperienced. Our very struggle against the exploiters was
taken from experience. If we have sometimes been condemned
on account of it, we can say, “Dear capitalist gentlemen,
you have only yourselves to blame. If you had not offered
such savage, senseless, insolent, and desperate resistance,
if you had not joined in an alliance with the world bourgeoi-
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V. I. L E N I N
sie, the revolution would have assumed more peaceful forms.”
Now that we have repulsed the savage onslaught on all sides
we can change to other methods, because we are acting not
as a narrow circle, but as a party which is leading the millions. The millions cannot immediately understand a change
of course, and so it frequently happens that blows aimed at
the kulaks fall on the middle peasants. That is not surprising. It must only be understood that this is due to historical conditions which have now been outlived and that the
new conditions and the new tasks in relation to this class
demand a new psychology.
Our decrees on peasant farming are in the main correct.
We have no grounds for renouncing a single one of them, or
for regretting a single one of them. But if the decrees are
right, it is wrong to impose them on the peasants by force.
That is not contained in a single decree. They are right inasmuch as they indicate the roads to follow, inasmuch as they
call to practical measures. When we say, “Encourage associations”, we are giving instructions which must be tested many
times before the final form in which to put them into effect
is found. When it is stated that we must strive to gain the
peasants’ voluntary consent, it means that they must be
persuaded, and persuaded by practical deeds. They will
not allow themselves to be convinced by mere words, and
they are perfectly right in that. It would be a bad thing if
they allowed themselves to be convinced merely by reading
decrees and agitational leaflets. If it were possible to
reshape economic life in this way, such reshaping would not
be worth a brass farthing. It must first be proved that such
association is better, people must be united in such a way
that they become actually united and are not at odds with
each other—it must be proved that association is advantageous. That is the way the peasant puts the question and that
is the way our decrees put it. If we have not been able to
achieve that so far, there is nothing to be ashamed of and we
must admit it frankly.
We have so far accomplished only the fundamental task
of every socialist revolution—that of defeating the bourgeoisie. That in the main has been accomplished, although an
extremely difficult half-year is beginning in which the imperialists of the world are making a last attempt to crush us.
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213
We can now say without in the least exaggerating that they
themselves understand that after this half-year their cause
will be absolutely hopeless. Either they take advantage now
of our state of exhaustion and defeat us, an isolated country,
or we emerge victorious not merely in regard to our country
alone. In this half-year, in which the food crisis has been
aggravated by a transport crisis, and in which the imperialist powers are endeavouring to attack us on several fronts,
our situation is extremely difficult. But this is the last
difficult half-year. We must continue to mobilise all our
forces in the struggle against the external enemy who is
attacking us.
But when we speak of the aims of our work in the rural
districts, in spite of all the difficulties, and in spite of the
fact that our experience has been wholly concerned with the
immediate task of crushing the exploiters, we must remember,
and never forget, that our aims in the rural districts,
in relation to the middle peasant, are entirely different.
All the class-conscious workers—from Petrograd, IvanovoVoznesensk, or Moscow—who have been to the rural districts
related examples of how a number of misunderstandings
which appeared to be irremovable, and a number of conflicts
which appeared to be very serious, were removed or mitigated when intelligent working men came forward and
spoke, not in the bookish language, but in a language understood by the peasants, when they spoke not as commanders
who take the liberty of giving orders without knowing anything of rural life, but as comrades, explaining the situation
and appealing to their sentiments as working people against
the exploiters. And by such comradely explanation they
accomplished what could not be accomplished by hundreds
of others who conducted themselves like commanders and
superiors.
That is the spirit that permeates the resolution we are
now submitting to you.
I have endeavoured in my brief report to dwell on the
underlying principles, on the general political significance
of this resolution. I have endeavoured to show—and I should
like to think that I have succeeded—that from the point of
view of the interests of the revolution as a whole we are
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making no change of policy, we are not changing the line. The
whiteguards and their henchmen are shouting, or will
shout, that we are. Let them shout. We do not care. We
are pursuing our aims in a most consistent manner. We
must transfer our attention from the aim of suppressing the
bourgeoisie to the aim of arranging the life of the middle
peasant. We must live in peace with him. In a communist
society the middle peasants will be on our side only when
we alleviate and improve their economic conditions. If
tomorrow we could supply one hundred thousand first-class
tractors, provide them with fuel, provide them with drivers—
you know very well that this at present is sheer fantasy—the
middle peasant would say, “I am for the communia” (i.e.,
for communism). But in order to do that we must first defeat
the international bourgeoisie, we must compel them to give
us those tractors, or so develop our productive forces as to
be able to provide them ourselves. That is the only correct
way to pose this question.
The peasant needs the industry of the towns; he cannot
live without it, and it is in our hands. If we set about the
task properly, the peasant will be grateful to us for bringing
him these products, these implements and this culture from
the towns. They will be brought to him not by exploiters,
not by landowners, but by his fellow-workers, whom he
values very highly, but values in a practical manner, for
the actual help they give, at the same time rejecting—and
quite rightly rejecting—all domineering and “orders” from
above.
First help, and then endeavour to win confidence. If you
set about this task correctly, if every step taken by every
one of our groups in the uyezds, the volosts, the food procurement groups, and in every other organisation is made properly, if every step of ours is carefully checked from this
point of view, we shall gain the confidence of the peasant,
and only then shall we be able to proceed farther; What we
must now do is to help him and advise him. This will not
be the orders of a commander, but the advice of a comrade.
The peasant will then be entirely on our side.
This, comrades, is what is contained in our resolution,
and this, in my opinion, must become the decision of the
Congress. If we adopt this, if it serves to determine the work
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
215
of all our Party organisations, we shall cope with the second
great task before us.
We have learned how to overthrow the bourgeoisie, how
to suppress them, and we are proud of the fact. But we have
not yet learned how to regulate our relations with the
millions of middle peasants, how to win their confidence,
and we must frankly admit it. But we have understood the
task, we have set it, and we say in all confidence, with full
knowledge and determination, that we shall cope with this
task—and then socialism will be absolutely invincible.
(Prolonged applause.)
Published according to
the verbatim report
corrected by Lenin
216
V. I. L E N I N
7
SPEECH IN OPPOSITION TO A MOTION
TO CLOSE THE DEBATE
ON THE REPORT ON WORK IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
MARCH 23
Comrades, I cannot possibly agree with the preceding speaker, because I am sure that under no circumstances will
you go straight to work in the rural districts after this evening. We members of the commission assumed that we were
not speaking at this Congress only for the benefit of the gathering in this small hall, but for the benefit of the whole of
Russia, which will not only peruse the decisions of our Congress, but will also want to know how much interest the
Party is displaying in the question of work in the rural districts. Therefore, it is necessary to hear what the comrades
from the districts have to say. If you spend an hour or an
hour and a half on this, the work in the rural districts will
not suffer in the least. Therefore, on behalf of the commission, I earnestly request that you do not grudge this hour
or hour and a half. It is not likely that the practical workers
who will speak here will add much that is new, but for the
newspaper-reading public all over Russia these few hours
of our work will be very beneficial.
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
217
8
RESOLUTION
ON THE ATTITUDE TO THE MIDDLE PEASANTS
Basing itself on the Party Programme adopted on March 22,
1919, insofar as it concerns work in the rural areas, and
giving full support to the law already promulgated by
the Soviet government on socialist land settlement and the
measures for the transition to socialist farming, the Eighth
Congress recognises that at the present time it is particularly
important to adhere more strictly to the line of the Party in
respect of the middle peasants, to display a more considerate
attitude towards their needs, end arbitrary action on the
part of the local authorities, and make an effort towards
agreement with them.
1) To confuse the middle peasants with the kulaks and to
extend to them in one or another degree measures directed
against the kulaks is to violate most flagrantly not only all
the decrees of the Soviet government and its entire policy,
but also all the basic principles of communism, according
to which agreement between the proletariat and the middle
peasants is one of the conditions for a painless transition to
the abolition of all exploitation in the period of decisive
struggle waged by the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
2) The middle peasants, who have comparatively strong
economic roots owing to the lagging of agricultural techniques behind industrial techniques even in the leading capitalist countries, to say nothing of Russia, will continue to
exist for quite a long time after the beginning of the proletarian revolution. Therefore, the tactics of the functionaries of
the Soviets in the villages, as well as of Party functionaries,
218
V. I. L E N I N
must envisage a long period of co-operation with the
middle peasants.
3) The Party must at all costs ensure that all Soviet functionaries in the countryside have a clear and thorough
grasp of the axiom of scientific socialism that the middle
peasants are not exploiters since they do not profit by the
labour of others. Such a class of small producers cannot
lose by socialism, but, on the contrary, will gain a great deal
by casting off the yoke of capital which exploits it in a thousand different ways even in a most democratic republic.
The correctly applied policy of Soviet power in the countryside, therefore, ensures alliance and agreement between
the victorious proletariat and the middle peasants.
4) While encouraging co-operatives of all kinds as well as
agricultural communes of middle peasants, representatives
of Soviet power must not allow the slightest coercion to be
used in setting them up. Associations are only worth while
when they have been set up by the peasants themselves, on
their own initiative, and the benefits of them have been verified in practice. Undue haste in this matter is harmful, for
it can only strengthen prejudices against innovations among
the middle peasants.
Representatives of Soviet power who permit themselves
to employ not only direct but even indirect compulsion to
bring peasants into communes must be brought strictly to
account and removed from work in the countryside.
5) All arbitrary requisitioning, i.e., requisitioning not in
conformity with the exact provisions of laws issued by the
central authority, must be ruthlessly punished. The Congress
insists on the strengthening of control in this field by the
People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, People’s Commissariat of the Interior, and the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee.
6) At the present time the extreme chaos which has been
caused in all countries of the world by the four years of imperialist war in the predatory interests of the capitalists, and
which has become particularly acute in Russia, places the
middle peasants in a difficult position.
In view of this, the law issued by the Soviet government
on the emergency tax, as distinct from all the laws issued
by all the bourgeois governments in the world, makes a point
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
219
of laying the burden of the tax wholly on the kulaks, the
inconsiderable number of peasant exploiters who particularly
enriched themselves during the war. The middle peasants
must be taxed very mildly, so that the sum levied is fully
within their means and not burdensome to them.
The Party demands, in any case, lenience towards the
middle peasants in collecting the emergency tax, even if
this reduces the total revenue.
7) The socialist state must extend the widest possible
aid to the peasants, mainly by supplying the middle peasants
with products of urban industries and, especially, improved
agricultural implements, seed and various materials in order
to raise efficiency in agriculture and ensure improvement
of the peasants’ working and living conditions.
If the present economic chaos does not allow the immediate and full implementation of these measures, it remains
the duty of local Soviet authorities to explore all possible
avenues to render the poor and middle peasants any real aid
to support them at the present difficult moment. The Party
finds it necessary to establish a large state fund for this purpose.
8) In particular, efforts must be made to give real and full
effect to the law issued by the Soviet government which requires of state farms, agricultural communes, and all other
similar associations that they render immediate and allround assistance to the middle peasants in their neighbourhood. Only on the basis of such actual assistance is it possible to achieve agreement with the middle peasants. Only in
this way can and must their confidence be won.
The Congress draws the attention of all Party workers to
the need to put into effect immediately all the points set
forth in the agrarian section of the Party Programme,
namely:
(a) regulation of the use of land by the peasants (elimination of scattered holdings, the open field system, etc.),
(b) supply of improved seeds and artificial fertilisers to the
peasants, (c) improvement of the breeds of the peasants’
livestock, (d) spreading of agronomical knowledge, (e) agronomical assistance to the peasants, (f) repair of the peasants’
farm implements at repair shops belonging to the Soviets,
(g) organisation of centres hiring out implements, experi-
220
V. I. L E N I N
mental stations, model fields, etc., (h) improvements to the
peasants’ land.
9) Peasants’ co-operative associations with the object of
increasing agricultural production, and especially of processing farm produce, improvements to the peasants’ land,
support of handicraft industries, etc., must be accorded extensive aid, both financial and organisational, by the state.
10) The Congress reminds all concerned that neither the
decisions of the Party nor the decrees of Soviet power have
ever deviated from the line of agreement with the middle
peasants. In the cardinal matter of the organisation of Soviet power in the countryside, for instance, a circular letter
signed by the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars
and the People’s Commissar for Food was issued when the
Poor Peasants’ Committees were established, pointing to
the need to include in these Committees representatives
of the middle peasants. When the Poor Peasants’ Committees
were abolished, the All-Russia Congress of Soviets again
pointed to the need to include representatives of the middle
peasants in the volost Soviets. The policy of the workers’
and peasants’ government and the Communist Party must
in the future too be permeated by this spirit of agreement
between the proletariat and the poor peasants on the one
hand, and the middle peasants on the other.
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
221
9
FROM MARX
Comrades, all the TO
items on
our agenda have been dealt
MAO
with. Permit me to say a few words in closing the Congress.
SPEECH CLOSING THE CONGRESS
MARCH 23
Comrades, it is not only the loss of one of our best organisers and practical leaders, Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov,
that has made the time at which we assembled here a very
difficult one. It is a particularly difficult time because international imperialism is making a last and exceptionally
strenuous effort to crush the Soviet Republic—of this there
is now no doubt. We do not doubt that the fierce attacks
launched in the West and the East, accompanied as they are
by a number of whiteguard revolts and attempts to dismantle
the railway line in several places, are deliberate measures
apparently decided on in Paris by the Entente imperialists.
We all know, comrades, how difficult it was for Russia, after
four years of imperialist war, to take up arms in defence of
the Soviet Republic against the imperialist plunderers.
We all know what a burden this war is, how it is exhausting
us. But we also know that this war is being fought with
redoubled vigour and dauntless courage only because for
the first time in world history, an army, an armed force,
has been created, which knows what it is fighting for; and
because, for the first time in world history, workers and
peasants are making incredible sacrifices in the knowledge
that they are defending the Soviet Socialist Republic, the
rule of the working people over the capitalists; they know
that they are defending the cause of the world proletarian
socialist revolution.
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
222
V. I. L E N I N
Amidst these difficult conditions we accomplished a
great deal in a very short time. We managed to endorse
our programme unanimously, as was the case with every
vital decision of the Congress. We are convinced that in
spite of its numerous literary and other shortcomings, this
programme has already gone into the history of the Third
International as the programme which sums up the results
of the new stage in the world movement for the emancipation of the proletariat. We are convinced that in many countries, where we have far more allies and friends than we imagine, the mere translation of our programme will provide
the most effective answer to the question as to what has been
done by the Russian Communist Party, which is one of the
units of the international proletariat. Our programme will
serve as extremely effective material for propaganda and agitation; it is a document which will lead the workers to say,
“Here are our comrades, our brothers; here our common
cause is becoming reality.”
Comrades, we succeeded in passing a number of other
important decisions at this Congress. We approved of the
formation of the Third, Communist International, which was
founded here in Moscow. We adopted a unanimous decision
on the military question. Vast though the differences of
opinion may have appeared at first, diverse as may have been
the views of the many comrades who very frankly criticised
the shortcomings of our military policy, we on the commission found no difficulty in arriving at an absolutely unanimous decision, and we shall leave this Congress convinced
that our chief defender, the Red Army, for the sake of which
the whole country is making such incalculable sacrifices,
will find in every delegate to the Congress, in every member
of the Party, a warm, unselfish and devoted assistant,
leader, friend and collaborator.
Comrades, we were able to solve the organisational problems confronting us with such ease because the solutions
had been indicated by the entire history of the relations
between the Party and the Soviets. All we were called upon
to do was sum up. On the subject of our work in the rural
districts; the Congress, in a unanimous decision speedily
arrived at, laid down our policy on a question that is particularly important and particularly difficult, and one that
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
223
in other countries is even regarded as insoluble—the attitude
of the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie towards the vast masses of middle peasants. We are all convinced
that this Congress decision will help to consolidate our
power. We are convinced that in the trying period through
which we are now passing, when the imperialists are making
their final effort to overthrow the Soviet government by
force, and when an acute food shortage and the chaotic state
of the transport have once again rendered the position of
hundreds, thousands and millions of people desperate, the
resolution we adopted and the spirit which animated the
delegates to this Congress will help us to bear these trials
and to live through this difficult half-year.
We are convinced that this will be the last difficult halfyear. This conviction of ours is greatly strengthened by the
news we announced to the Congress the other day—the news
of the success of the proletarian revolution in Hungary.
Up to now Soviet power has been victorious in only one
country, among the peoples which once constituted the former
Russian Empire; and short-sighted people, who found it
exceptionally difficult to abandon routine and old habits
of thought (even though they may have belonged to the
socialist camp), imagined that this surprising swing towards
proletarian Soviet democracy was due entirely to the peculiar conditions prevailing in Russia; they thought that perhaps the specific features of this democracy reflected, as in a
distorting mirror, the peculiar features of former, tsarist
Russia. If there was ever any foundation for such an opinion,
there is certainly none whatever now. Comrades, the news
received today gives us a picture of the Hungarian revolution.
We learn from today’s news that the Allied powers have presented a brutal ultimatum to Hungary demanding free passage for their troops. The bourgeois government, seeing that
the Allied powers wanted to move their troops through Hungary, seeing that Hungary would be subjected to the frightful sufferings of a new war—this government of bourgeois
compromisers voluntarily resigned, voluntarily opened
negotiations with the Communists, our Hungarian comrades, who were in prison, and voluntarily admitted that
there was no way out of the situation except by transferring
power to the working people. (Applause.)
224
V. I. L E N I N
It was said that we were usurpers. At the end of 1917 and
the beginning of 1918, the only words with which the bourgeoisie and many of their followers described our revolution
were “violence” and “usurpation”. Even now we hear statements to the effect that the Bolshevik government is holding
on by force, although we have repeatedly demonstrated that
this is absurd. But if such absurdities could be uttered in
the past, they have now been silenced by what has occurred
in Hungary. Even the bourgeoisie has realised that there can
be no government authority except that of the Soviets. The
bourgeoisie of a more cultured country sees more clearly
than our bourgeoisie did on the eve of October 25 that the
country is perishing, that trials of increasing severity are
being imposed on the people, and that, therefore, political
power must be transferred to the Soviets, that the workers
and peasants of Hungary, the new, Soviet, proletarian
democracy must save her.
Comrades, the difficulties which face the Hungarian
revolution are immense. Hungary is a small country compared
with Russia and can be stifled by the imperialists much more
easily. However great the difficulties which undoubtedly
still face Hungary, we have achieved a moral victory in
addition to a victory for Soviet power. A most radical,
democratic and compromising bourgeoisie realised that at a
moment of extreme crisis, when a new war is menacing a
country already exhausted by war, a Soviet government is
a historical necessity, that in such a country there can be no
government but a Soviet government, the dictatorship of
the proletariat.
Comrades, behind us there is a long line of revolutionaries
who sacrificed their lives for the emancipation of Russia.
The lot of the majority of these revolutionaries was a hard
one. They suffered the persecution of the tsarist government,
but it was not their good fortune to see the triumph of the
revolution. A better fortune has fallen to our lot. Not only
have we seen the triumph of our revolution, not only have
we seen it become consolidated amidst unprecedented difficulties, create new forms of government and win the sympathy
of the whole world, but we are also seeing the seed sown by
the Russian revolution springing up in Europe. This imbues
us with the absolute and unshakable conviction that no mat-
EIGHTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
225
ter how difficult the trials that may still befall us, and no
matter how great the misfortunes that may be brought upon
us by that dying beast, international imperialism, that beast
will perish, and socialism will triumph throughout the world.
(Prolonged applause.)
I declare the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist
Party closed.
226
WIRELESS MESSAGE OF GREETING
TO THE GOVERNMENT
OF THE HUNGARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC
MARCH 22, 1919
This is Lenin. Sincere greetings to the proletarian government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and especially to
Comrade Béla Kun. 45 I conveyed your greetings to the Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). They
were received with tremendous enthusiasm. We shall send
you the decisions of the Moscow Congress of the Third Communist International, as well as a report on the military
situation, as soon as possible. It is absolutely necessary to
maintain constant radio communication between Budapest
and Moscow. Accept my communist greetings and hearty
handshake, Lenin.
First published in Hungarian
in the newspaper Népszava No. 7 0 ,
March 2 3 , 1 9 1 9
First published in Russian
in 1 9 2 7
Published according to
the Russian translation
227
RECORD OF WIRELESS MESSAGE TO BÉLA KUN
MARCH 23, 1919
Lenin to Béla Kun in Budapest
Please inform us what real guarantees you have that
the new Hungarian Government will actually be a communist, and not simply a socialist, government, i.e., one of
traitor-socialists.
Have the Communists a majority in the government?
When will the Congress of Soviets take place? What does
the socialists’ recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat really amount to?
It is altogether beyond doubt that it would be a mistake
merely to imitate our Russian tactics in all details in the
specific conditions of the Hungarian revolution. I must warn
you against this mistake, but I should like to know where
you see real guarantees.
So that I may be certain that the answer has come to me
from you personally, I ask you to indicate in what sense I
spoke to you about the National Assembly when you last
visited me in the Kremlin.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
First published in 1 9 3 2
Published according to
the manuscript
228
REPLY TO AN OPEN LETTER
BY A BOURGEOIS SPECIALIST
Today I received the following:
“An open letter of a ‘specialist’ to Comrade Lenin.
“I read in Izvestia your report on the specialists, and I cannot
suppress a cry of indignation. Don’t you really understand that not
a single honest specialist, if he has retained the least shred of selfrespect, can agree to go to work merely for the sake of the animal
comforts with which you are offering to provide him? Have you retired
so deeply into the seclusion of the Kremlin that you fail to see the
life that is going around you, that you do not see how many of the
Russian specialists, though not government Communists, are real
workers, who acquired their special knowledge at the cost of extreme
effort not from the capitalists and not for the purpose of making money,
but in persistent struggle against the deadly conditions of student
and academic life under the old system? These conditions have not
been improved for them under the communist government (to me this
does not coincide with my conception of the communist system).
Against these absolutely genuine proletarians—even though they come
from different classes—who have served the working people by word,
deed and thought from the very first days of their conscious life—against
these, whom you lump together in a single contaminated heap of
‘intellectuals’, you incite ignorant, upstart Communists, former
policemen, minor officials and shopkeepers, who in the provinces
often constitute a large section of the ‘local authorities’, and it is
difficult to describe the horrors of the humiliation and suffering they
are experiencing. Continuous denunciation and accusations of the
absurdest description, fruitless but extremely humiliating house
searches, threats of shooting, requisitions and confiscations, invasion
of the most private sides of personal life (a commander of a unit quartered in an educational establishment at which I teach actually ordered
me to sleep in one bed with my wife), these are the conditions
under which many specialists in establishments of higher learning
were compelled to work until very lately. But all these ‘petty-bourgeois’ have remained at their posts and faithfully fulfilled the moral
obligations they undertook to preserve, no matter at what sacrifice,
REPLY TO A BOURGEOIS SPECIALIST
229
culture and knowledge for those who humiliated and insulted them
at the instigation of their leaders. They realised that their personal
misfortunes and sorrows must not be confused with the question of
building a new and better life; and this helped, and is helping them
now, to bear it, and continue with their work.
“But believe me, from among these people whom you, without
discrimination, have christened bourgeois, counter-revolutionaries,
saboteurs, and so forth, only because they conceive of the approach
to the future socialist and communist system differently from the
way you and your disciples conceive of it, you will not buy a single
man at the price that you think of offering. After all, the ‘specialists’
who go to work for you in order to save their skins will not benefit
the country in any way. A specialist is not a machine. He cannot be
simply wound up and set going. Without inspiration, without the
internal spark of life, without the urge to create, not a single specialist,
will produce anything, no matter how highly he is paid. But a volunteer, working and creating among comrades and collaborators who
respect him and regard him as a guide who knows his business, and
not as a suspect to be kept under the surveillance of a communist
commissar of the 1919 crop, will put his heart and soul into his work.
“If you don’t want to have ‘specialists’ working merely for the
sake of their salary, if you want new, honest volunteers to join the
specialists who are already co-operating with you in some places,
not out of fear, but conscientiously, in spite of the fact that they
disagree with you on principle on many questions, in spite of the
humiliating conditions into which your tactics often place them, in
spite of the unprecedented bureaucratic chaos that reigns in many
Soviet offices and which sometimes wrecks even most vital undertakings—if you want all this, then first of all purge your Party and your
government offices of the unscrupulous Mitlaüfer, * comb out these
self-seekers, adventurers, scoundrels and bandits who, sheltering
under the banners of communism, are either, owing to their despicable natures, grabbing public property, or, owing to their stupidity,
are cutting at the roots of public life by their absurd, disruptive fussiness.
“If you want to ‘use’ the specialists, do not buy them, but learn
to respect them as men, and not as livestock and machines that you
need for a certain time.
“M. Dukelsky,
“Professor at Voronezh Agricultural Institute. President of the Central Board of State Enterprises in
the Leather Industry.”
* Casual
fellow-travellers.—Ed.
230
V. I. L E N I N
This is a wrathful letter, but I think it is sincere, and one
I would like to answer.
After all is said and done, I think the author is governed
mainly by personal irritation, which has robbed him of the
ability to discuss events from the mass point of view, and
from the point of view of their actual consecutiveness.
According to the author, we Communists repelled the
specialists by “christening” them with all sorts of bad names.
This was not the case.
The workers and peasants set up the Soviet government
after overthrowing the bourgeoisie and bourgeois parliamentarism. It is not difficult to see today that this was
not a “gamble”, not an “act of folly” on the part of the
Bolsheviks, but the beginning of a world-wide change of
two eras in world history—the era of the bourgeoisie
and the era of socialism, the era of capitalist parliamentarism and the era of the Soviet state institutions of the proletariat. If, a year or so ago, the majority of the intellectuals
would not (and partly could not) see this, are we to blame?
The sabotage was started by the intelligentsia and the
government officials, the bulk of whom are bourgeois and
petty bourgeois. These terms are a class characterisation, a
historical appraisal, which may be right or wrong, but which
must not be regarded as terms of abuse, or vituperation. It
was inevitable that the workers and peasants should be enraged by the sabotage of the intelligentsia, and if anybody is
to “blame” for this, it can only be the bourgeoisie and their
willing and unwilling accomplices.
Had we “incited” anybody against the “intelligentsia”,
we would have deserved to be hanged for it. Far from inciting the people against the intelligentsia, we on the contrary, in the name of the Party, and in the name of the government, urged the necessity of creating the best possible working conditions for the intelligentsia. I have been doing this
since April 1918, if not earlier. I do not know which issue
of Izvestia the author refers to, but it is very strange for a
man who is accustomed to study politics, that is to say, to
analyse events, from the mass and not from the personal point
of view, to hear that to advocate higher pay necessarily
expresses the unworthy, or generally evil, desire to “buy”. I
hope the respected author will forgive me for saying so, but,
REPLY TO A BOURGEOIS SPECIALIST
231
on my word of honour, this reminded me of that literary
character the “Muslin Miss”.*
Let us assume that the question is one of paying high
salaries to a special, hand-picked group, that is, a group
which formerly, for general social reasons, did not, and
could not receive higher salaries. In that case, there might
be grounds for assuming that the government’s object is to
“buy” this group. But when we are discussing hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, who always received higher
salaries, how is it possible to regard the proposal that it is
necessary, for a time, to pay a lower, but higher than the
average, salary as a snare, or an “insult” unless one wishes to
adopt a tone of furious irritation and carping criticism of
everything.
Not only is his whole argument incongruous, but the
author defeats himself when he relates, as of some great
wrong done to him, as of some deep humiliation, the case
when the commander of a unit quartered in a certain
educational establishment ordered the professor to sleep in
one bed with his wife.
Firstly, to the extent that the desire of intellectual people to have two beds, a bed for the husband and one for the
wife, is legitimate (and it is undoubtedly legitimate), to
that extent, it is necessary to have a salary higher than
the average to satisfy that desire. The author of the letter
cannot but know that on the “average” the number of beds
in Russia was always less than one per Russian citizen!
Secondly, was the commander of the unit wrong in this
case? If he was not rude, offensive, and did not deliberately
humiliate the professor, and so forth (which might have been
the case, and for which he should have been punished), if,
I repeat, this was not the case, then, in my opinion, he was
right. The men were worn out, they had not seen a bed,
or probably a decent lodging in general, for months on end.
They are defending the Socialist Republic under incredible
difficulties, under inhuman conditions; did they not have
a right to take a bed for a short time to rest in? The soldiers
and their commander were right.
* This expression was current in Russia in the nineteenth
century; it was applied to young girls with limited interests
brought up on patriarchal country estates.—Ed.
232
V. I. L E N I N
We do not want to reduce the general conditions of life
of the intellectuals to the average, at one stroke, and consequently we are opposed to reducing their salaries to the average. But everything must be subordinated to the needs of
the war, and intellectuals must put up with some inconvenience so that the soldiers may be able to rest. This is
not a humiliating, but a just demand.
The author demands that intellectuals should be treated
like comrades. He is right. We demand that too. The programme of our Party contains such a demand clearly, plainly and precisely formulated. If, on the other hand, groups
of non-Party intellectuals, or of intellectuals who because
of their party allegiance are politically hostile to the
Bolsheviks, as clearly formulate the demand to their adherents, “be comradely towards weary soldiers, and towards
over-worked workers who are enraged by centuries of exploitation”, then manual and non-manual workers will draw
closer together at an extremely rapid rate.
The author demands that we should purge our Party and
government offices of “unscrupulous, casual fellow-travellers, of self-seekers, adventurers, scoundrels and bandits”.
That is a just demand. We ourselves put it forward long
ago, and are fulfilling it. We are not giving a free run to
“newcomers” in our Party. The Party Congress even decided
on a re-registration of members. 46 We shoot all bandits,
self-seekers and adventurers that we catch, and will continue
to do so. But if this process of purging is to proceed more
thoroughly and quickly, sincere non-Party intellectuals
must help us. When they form groups of people personally
acquainted with each other, and in their name call for loyal
service in Soviet offices, call upon them to “serve the working
people”, to use the term of the open letter, then the birthpangs of the new social order will be much shortened and
eased.
N. Lenin
March 27, 1919
Pravda No. 6 7 ,
March 2 8 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Pravda text
233
ON THE CANDIDACY OF M. I. KALININ
FOR THE POST OF CHAIRMAN
OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
SPEECH AT THE TWELFTH SESSION
OF THE ALL - RUSSIA CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
MARCH 30, 1919
Comrades! To find a person who could take the place
of Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov in full is an
exceedingly difficult task, for it is next to impossible for
any one man to be at once a leading Party worker, moreover
one who knows the history of the Party, and an excellent
judge of people capable of choosing leading functionaries
for the Soviets. It would be impossible to expect any one
comrade to assume all the functions that Comrade Sverdlov
took care of alone—on this all were agreed when candidacies
were discussed in the Party—and hence we shall have to
entrust the various functions to whole collegiums that will
meet daily and direct the different spheres of work. As far
as the chairman is concerned, we must ensure that he expresses the Party line in respect of the peasantry.
You know that our approach to the middle peasants as
set forth at the Party Congress introduces no change in our
general policy. The tasks we have outlined in regard to the
middle peasants must be carried out once our primary problem—the suppression of the bourgeoisie—has been solved.
The question of the attitude to the middle peasants is a more
acute problem for us than for our comrades in Europe, and
we must make sure that we have at the head of the Soviet
state a comrade who can demonstrate that our decision in
this matter will really be carried out.
234
V. I. L E N I N
I believe that we can and must find a comrade who will
devote himself wholly to carrying out the line of the leading
Party in respect of the middle peasants. We know that at
present the problem of gathering and transmitting information is particularly acute. We know that the break-down
of transport facilities and the existence of civil war, which
at times interrupts communications between the centre and
entire regions, not to speak of separate gubernias—we know
that under the circumstances this problem requires special
attention.
We know that we can solve this problem if we find a comrade with the necessary experience and knowledge of the
life of the middle peasants, and I believe that the candidacy of which you read in today’s papers meets all these
requirements. This is the candidacy of Comrade Kalinin.
Here we have a comrade who has been engaged in Party
work for nearly twenty years. He is a peasant from Tver
Gubernia, who has close connections with peasant farming
which he constantly renews and freshens. Petrograd workers
have witnessed his ability to approach wide sections of the
working masses who had had no Party experience; where
other propagandists and agitators failed to find the right,
comradely approach to them, Comrade Kalinin succeeded.
All this is especially important at the present time. Of course,
the middle peasantry as a whole, all the best elements
among them, are giving us the resolute support that will
overcome all difficulties and put down the revolt of the rural
kulaks and that insignificant minority of the rural masses
who follow them. We know that our main task in a country
of small peasants is to ensure an indestructible alliance of
the workers and the middle peasants. Our agrarian measures—complete abolition of landed proprietorship and determined assistance to the middle peasants—have already produced results, and in the course of the past year have led to an increase in the number of middle peasants. But in the localities
people have frequently been appointed to administrative
posts who were not up to the job.
There have been cases of abuses, but we are not to blame
for them. We know that we have done everything we could
to enlist the intelligentsia, but there were political differences
ON THE CANDIDACY OF M. I. KALININ
235
that kept us apart. We know that the epoch of bourgeois
parliamentarism has ended, that the sympathy of the workers of the whole world is with Soviet power, and that the
victory of Soviet power is inevitable, no matter how many
proletarian leaders the bourgeoisie may kill, as they are
doing in Germany. The sum total of their experience will,
in the long run, inevitably bring the intelligentsia into our
ranks, and we shall acquire the material with which we can
govern. We shall see to it that alien elements who have
attached themselves to Soviet power are removed—indeed,
they are one cause of dissatisfaction which we are not afraid
to admit is legitimate. We must pay maximum attention
to the fight against this evil. At the Party Congress we decided firmly to make this line of conduct obligatory for all
functionaries.
We must say that we see no way of introducing socialist
farming other than through a series of comradely agreements
with the middle peasants, to whom we must turn more and
more often.
We know also that comrades who bore the brunt of the
work in the period of the revolution and were completely
engrossed in this work, were unable to approach the middle
peasants as they should have, they could not avoid making
mistakes, each of which was seized upon by our enemies,
each of which gave rise to certain doubts and complicated
the middle peasant’s attitude toward us.
That is why it is very important for this purpose to find
a comrade possessing the qualities I have mentioned. We
must help him with our organisational experience, so that
the middle peasants should see that they have one of their
own as the highest functionary in the whole Soviet Republic,
so that the decision of our Party calling for a proper approach
to the middle peasant and declaring our resolve to examine, study every step we make and test it in the light of
the experience we have gained will not remain on paper.
We know that the numbers of our allies are growing,
that they will increase many times over in the next few
months, but for the time being the burden rests wholly on
our country, which is greatly ruined and impoverished. The
load is more than the middle peasant can carry. We must go
to him and do everything we can, we must make him under-
236
V. I. L E N I N
stand and show him in practice that we are firmly resolved
to carry out the decisions of our Party Congress.
That is why the candidacy of a man like Comrade Kalinin
ought to have the unanimous support of us all. His candidacy
will enable us to organise practically a series of direct contacts between the highest representative of Soviet power
and the middle peasants; it will help to bring us closer to
them.
This aim cannot he achieved at once, but we have no doubt
that the decision we propose to make will be the correct one,
though we know that we have little practical experience in
this respect. Let the highest representative of the Soviet
Republic himself be the first, with our joint assistance, to
begin acquiring this experience, gather the full sum of knowledge, and check up; then we can be certain that we shall
solve the task facing us, that Russia will become not only the
model of a country where the dictatorship of the proletariat
has been firmly established and the bourgeoisie ruthlessly
suppressed—this has already been done—but also the model
of a country where the relations between the urban workers
and the middle peasants are satisfactorily arranged on the
basis of comradely support and new experience; this is one
of the main guarantees of the complete victory of the proletarian revolution.
That is why I take it upon myself to recommend to you
this candidacy—the candidacy of Comrade Kalinin.
Brief report published in
the newspaper Izvestia No. 7 0 ,
April 1 , 1 9 1 9
First published in full in 1 9 3 2
Published according to
the verbatim report
SPEECHES
ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS 47
Recordings made at
the end of March 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the gramophone records
74
SEHCEEPS
SDROCER ENOHPOMARG NO
ot gnidrocca dehsilbuP
sdrocer enohpomarg eht
ta edam sgnidroceR
9 1 9 1 hcraM fo dne eht
239
1
IN MEMORY OF COMRADE YAKOV MIKHAILOVICH
SVERDLOV, CHAIRMAN OF THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
All those who have worked day after day with Comrade
Sverdlov, now realise full well that it was his exceptional
organising talent which ensured for us that of which we have
been so proud, and justly proud. He made it possible for us
to carry on united, efficient, organised activities worthy
of the organised proletarian masses, without which we could
not have achieved success, and which answered fully the
requirements of the proletarian revolution. The memory of
Comrade Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov will serve not only
as a symbol of the revolutionary’s devotion to his cause,
not only as the model of how to combine a practical, sober
mind, practical ability, the closest contact with the
masses and ability to guide them, but also a pledge that evergrowing masses of proletarians will march forward to the
complete victory of the communist revolution.
240
V. I. L E N I N
2
THE THIRD, COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL
In March of this year of 1919, an international congress
of Communists was held in Moscow. This congress founded the
Third, Communist International, an association of the
workers of the whole world who are striving to establish
Soviet power in all countries.
The First International, founded by Marx, existed from
1864 to 1872. The defeat of the heroic workers of Paris—of
the celebrated Paris Commune—marked the end of this
International. It is unforgettable, it will remain for ever
in the history of the workers’ struggle for their emancipation.
It laid the foundation of that edifice of the world socialist
republic which it is now our good fortune to be building.
The Second International existed from 1889 to 1914, up
to the war. This was the period of the most calm and peaceful
development of capitalism, a period without great revolutions. During this period the working-class movement gained
strength and matured in a number of countries. But the workers’ leaders in most of the parties had become accustomed
to peaceful conditions and had lost the ability to wage a
revolutionary struggle. When, in 1914, there began the war,
that drenched the earth with blood for four years, the war
between the capitalists over the division of profits, the war
for supremacy over small and weak nations, these leaders
deserted to the side of their respective governments. They
betrayed the workers, they helped to prolong the slaughter,
they became enemies of socialism, they went over to the side
of the capitalists.
The masses of workers turned their backs on these traitors
to socialism. All over the world there was a turn towards the
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
241
revolutionary struggle. The war proved that capitalism was
doomed. A new system is coming to take its place. The old
word socialism had been desecrated by the traitors to socialism.
Today, the workers who have remained loyal to the cause
of throwing off the yoke of capital call themselves Communists. All over the world the association of Communists is
growing. In a number of countries Soviet power has already
triumphed. Soon we shall see the victory of communism
throughout the world; we shall see the foundation of the
World Federative Republic of Soviets.
Published according to
the gramophone record
verified with the manuscript
242
V. I. L E N I N
3
COMMUNICATION ON THE WIRELESS NEGOTIATIONS
WITH BÉLA KUN
I knew Comrade Béla Kun very well when he was still
a prisoner of war in Russia; and he visited me many times
to discuss communism and the communist revolution. Therefore, when news of the Hungarian communist revolution
was received, and in a communication signed by Comrade
Béla Kun at that, we wanted to speak to him and ascertain
exactly how the revolution stood. The first communication
we received about it gave us some grounds for fearing that,
perhaps, the so-called socialists, traitor-socialists, had resorted to some deception, had got round the Communists, the
more so that the latter were in prison. And so, the day after
the first communication about the Hungarian revolution
was received, I sent a wireless message to Budapest, asking
Béla Kun to come to the apparatus, and I put a number of
questions to him of such a nature as to enable me to make
sure that it was really he who was speaking. I asked him
what real guarantees there were for the character of the government and for its actual policy. Comrade Béla Kun’s
reply was quite satisfactory and dispelled all our doubts.
It appears that the Left Socialists had visited Béla Kun in
prison to consult him about forming a government. And it
was only these Left Socialists, who sympathised with the
Communists, and also people from the Centre who formed
the new government, while the Right Socialists, the traitorsocialists, the irreconcilables and incorrigibles, so to speak,
left the Party, and not a single worker followed them. Later
communications showed that the policy of the Hungarian
Government was most firm and so Communist in trend that
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
243
while we began with workers’ control of industry and only
gradually began to socialise industry, Béla Kun, with his
prestige, his conviction that he was backed by vast masses,
could at once pass a law which converted all the industrial
undertakings in Hungary that were run on capitalist lines
into public property. Two days later we became fully convinced that the Hungarian revolution had at once, with
extraordinary rapidity, taken the communist road. The
bourgeoisie voluntarily surrendered power to the Communists
of Hungary. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to the whole
world that when a grave crisis supervenes, when the nation
is in danger, the bourgeoisie is unable to govern. And there
is only one government that is really a popular government,
a government that is really beloved of the people—the government of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies.
Long live Soviet power in Hungary!
244
V. I. L E N I N
4
AN APPEAL TO THE RED ARMY
Comrades, Red Army men! The capitalists of Britain,
America and France are waging war against Russia. They
are taking revenge on the Soviet workers’ and peasants’
republic for having overthrown the power of the landowners
and capitalists and thereby set an example to all the nations
of the globe. The capitalists of Britain, France and America
are helping with money and munitions the Russian landowners who are bringing troops from Siberia, the Don and North
Caucasus against Soviet power for the purpose of restoring
the rule of the tsar and the power of the landowners
and capitalists. But this will not happen. The Red Army
has closed its ranks, has risen up and driven the landowners’
troops and whiteguard officers from the Volga, has recaptured
Riga and almost the whole of the Ukraine, and is marching
towards Odessa and Rostov. A little more effort, a few more
months of fighting the enemy, and victory will be ours. The
Red Army is strong because it is consciously and unitedly
marching into battle for the peasants’ land, for the rule
of the workers and peasants, for Soviet power.
The Red Army is invincible because it has united millions
of working peasants with the workers who have now learned
to fight, have acquired comradely discipline, who do not lose
heart, who become steeled after slight reverses, and are more
and more boldly marching against the enemy, convinced
he will soon be defeated.
Comrades, Red Army men! The alliance of the workers
and peasants of the Red Army is firm, close and insoluble.
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
245
The kulaks, the very rich peasants, are trying to foment
revolts against Soviet power, but they constitute an insignificant minority. They rarely succeed in fooling the peasants, and then not for long. The peasants know that only in
alliance with the workers can they vanquish the landowners.
Sometimes, in the rural districts people call themselves Communists who are actually the worst enemies of the working
people, bullies who hang on to the authorities in pursuit of
their own selfish aims, and who resort to deception, commit
acts of injustice and wrong the middle peasant. The workers’
and peasants’ government has firmly decided to fight against
these people and clear them out of the countryside. The middle peasants are not enemies but friends of the workers,
friends of Soviet power. The class-conscious workers and
genuine Soviet people treat the middle peasants as comrades.
The middle peasants do not exploit the labour of others,
they do not grow rich at other people’s expense, as the
kulaks do; the middle peasants work themselves, they live
by their own labour. The Soviet government will crush the
kulaks, will comb out of the villages those who treat the middle peasants unjustly and, come what may, will pursue the
policy of alliance between the workers and all the working
peasants—both poor and middle peasants.
This alliance is growing all over the world. The revolution
is drawing nigh, it is everywhere maturing. A few days ago
it was victorious in Hungary. In Hungary, Soviet power,
workers’ government, has been established. This is what
all nations will inevitably do.
Comrades, Red Army men! Be staunch, firm and united.
March boldly forward against the enemy. Victory will be
ours. The power of the landowners and the capitalists,
broken in Russia, will be defeated throughout the world.
March 29
246
V. I. L E N I N
5
THE MIDDLE PEASANTS
The most important question now confronting the Communist Party, the question on which most attention was concentrated at the last Party Congress, is that of the middle
peasants.
Naturally, the first question usually asked is, what is a
middle peasant?
Naturally, Party comrades have often related how they
have been asked this question in the villages. The middle
peasant, we say in reply, is a peasant who does not exploit
the labour of others, who does not live on the labour of
others, who does not take the fruits of other people’s labour
in any shape or form, but works himself, and lives by his
own labour.
Under capitalism there were fewer peasants of this type
than there are now, because the majority of the peasants
were in the ranks of the impoverished, and only an insignificant minority, then, as now, were in the ranks of the
kulaks, the exploiters, the rich peasants.
The middle peasants have been increasing in number
since the private ownership of land was abolished, and the
Soviet government has firmly resolved at all costs to establish relations of complete peace and harmony with them.
It goes without saying that the middle peasant cannot
immediately accept socialism, because he clings firmly to
what he is accustomed to, he is cautious about all innovations, subjects what he is offered to a factual, practical
test and does not decide to change his way of life until he is
convinced that the change is necessary
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
247
It is precisely for this reason that we must know, remember
and put into practice the rule that when Communist workers
go into rural districts they must try to establish comradely
relations with the middle peasants, it is their duty to establish these comradely relations with them; they must
remember that working peasants who do not exploit the
labour of others are the comrades of the urban workers and
that we can and must establish with them a voluntary alliance inspired by sincerity and confidence. Every measure
proposed by the communist government must be regarded
merely as advice, as a suggestion to the middle peasants,
as an invitation to them to accept the new order.
Only by co-operation in the work of testing these measures
in practice, finding out in what way they are mistaken,
eliminating possible errors and achieving agreement with
the middle peasant—only by such co-operation can the alliance between the workers and the peasants be ensured. This
alliance is the main strength and the bulwark of Soviet
power; this alliance is a pledge that socialist transformation
will be successful, victory over capital will be achieved and
exploitation in all its forms will be abolished.
248
V. I. L E N I N
6
WHAT IS SOVIET POWER?
What is Soviet power? What is the essence of this new
power, which people in most countries still will not, or cannot,
understand? The nature of this power, which is attracting
larger and larger numbers of workers in every country, is
the following: in the past the country was, in one way or
another, governed by the rich, or by the capitalists, but now,
for the first time, the country is being governed by the
classes, and moreover, by the masses of those classes, which
capitalism formerly oppressed. Even in the most democratic
and freest republics, as long as capital rules and the land
remains private property, the government will always be
in the hands of a small minority, nine-tenths of which consist of capitalists, or rich men.
In this country, in Russia, for the first time in the world
history, the government of the country is so organised that
only the workers and the working peasants, to the exclusion
of the exploiters; constitute those mass organisations known
as Soviets, and these Soviets wield all state power. That is
why, in spite of the slander that the representatives of the
bourgeoisie in all countries spread about Russia, the word
“Soviet” has now become not only intelligible but popular
all over the world, has become the favourite word of the
workers, and of all working people. And that is why, notwithstanding all the persecution to which the adherents of
communism in the different countries are subjected, Soviet
power must necessarily, inevitably, and in the not distant
future, triumph all over the world.
We know very well that there are still many defects in
the organisation of Soviet power in this country. Soviet
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
249
power is not a miracle-working talisman. It does not, overnight, heal all the evils of the past—illiteracy, lack of culture,
the consequences of a barbarous war, the aftermath of predatory capitalism. But it does pave the way to socialism.
It gives those who were formerly oppressed the chance to
straighten their backs and to an ever-increasing degree to
take the whole government of the country, the whole administration of the economy, the whole management of production, into their own hands.
Soviet power is the road to socialism that was discovered
by the masses of the working people, and that is why it is
the true road, that is why it is invincible.
250
V. I. L E N I N
7
HOW THE WORKING PEOPLE CAN BE SAVED
FROM THE OPPRESSION OF THE LANDOWNERS
AND CAPITALISTS FOR EVER
The enemies of the working people, the landowners and
capitalists say that the workers and peasants cannot live
without them. “If it were not for us,” they say, “there would
be nobody to maintain order, to give out work, and to compel people to work. If it were not for us everything would
collapse, and the state would fall to pieces. We have been
driven away, but chaos will bring us back again.” But this
sort of talk by the landowners and capitalists will not
confuse, intimidate, or deceive the workers and peasants.
An army needs the strictest discipline; nevertheless the
class-conscious workers succeeded in uniting the peasants,
succeeded in taking the old tsarist officers into their service,
succeeded in building a victorious army.
The Red Army established unprecedentedly firm discipline—not by means of the lash, but based on the intelligence, loyalty and devotion of the workers and peasants
themselves.
And so, to save the working people from the yoke of the
landowners and capitalists for ever, to save them from the
restoration of their power, it is necessary to build up a great
Red Army of Labour. That army will be invincible if it is
cemented by labour discipline. The workers and peasants
must and will prove that they can properly distribute
labour, establish devoted discipline and ensure loyalty in
working for the common good, and can do it themselves,
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
251
without the landowners and in spite of them, without the
capitalists and in spite of them.
Labour discipline, enthusiasm for work, readiness for selfsacrifice, close alliance between the peasants and the workers—this is what will save the working people from the
oppression of the landowners and capitalists for ever.
252
V. I. L E N I N
8
ANTI - JEWISH POGROMS
Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews.
When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days
it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the
Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners
and the capitalists, organised pogroms against the Jews.
The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of
the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against
the Jews. In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists
fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the
working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists
only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and
capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers
and peasants. Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the
Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the
priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived
in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes
of the people are being opened.
It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they
form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are
oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle
for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters
and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and
among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow
and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, differ-
SPEECHES ON GRAMOPHONE RECORDS
253
ent nations and different races. Those who do not work are
kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich
Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are
in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.
Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted
the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the
Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.
Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the
workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.
254
TELEPHONE MESSAGE
TO THE ALL - RUSSIA EXTRAORDINARY COMMISSION
APRIL 1, 1919
The All-Russia Extraordinary Commission reports that
information has been received from Petrograd to the effect
that agents of Kolchak, Denikin and the Allies made an
attempt to blow up the Petrograd water main. In the
cellars, explosives and an infernal machine were found,
which a special unit took away to destroy, but as a result of a
premature explosion the commander of the unit was killed
and ten Red Army men were wounded.
In some places attempts are being made to blow up
bridges and to dislocate railway traffic.
Attempts are being made to destroy the permanent way
and cut off Red Moscow and Petrograd from food supplies.
The Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks are
taking an active part in fomenting strikes and in calling
for the overthrow of Soviet power.
In view of this information, the Council of Defence orders
you to take the most urgent measures to suppress every attempt to cause explosions, to wreck railways and to foment
strikes.
The Council of Defence orders you to call upon all Extraordinary Commission workers to be vigilant, and also orders
you to inform the Council of Defence of all measures you
take.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Council of Defence
Published in Izvestia No. 7 1 ,
April 2 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Izvestia text
255
EXTRAORDINARY PLENARY MEETING
OF THE MOSCOW
SOVIET OF WORKERS’ AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES
APRIL 3, 1919
1
REPORT ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
OF THE SOVIET REPUBLIC
Comrades, I must commence my report on the domestic
and foreign situation of the Soviet Republic by stating
that in the coming few months, with the approach of spring,
we shall again be faced with an extremely grave situation.
I think that the conditions both of the Civil War and of the
war against the Entente—I will deal with them when I
speak of the international situation—enable us to say, even
if we are very cautious, that the half-year, the middle of
which we have now reached, will be the last difficult halfyear; the French and British capitalists will not be
strong enough to launch another attack similar to the one
they are now developing in full. On the other hand, all our
Red Army’s achievements in the Ukraine and the Don, which
we are able to consolidate, will greatly alleviate our internal
situation, will provide grain and coal, food and fuel. For
the time being, however, while the struggle is still going
on and we are encountering enormous difficulties in collecting grain in the Ukraine with the roads now impassable
owing to the spring thaw, the situation is extremely grave.
We have said more than once that the whole strength
of Soviet power rests on the confidence and class-consciousness of the workers. We have more than once demonstrated
that numerous as may be the enemies that surround us now,
and the spies that the Entente sends into this country and
who are assisted by people who are actually helping the
256
V. I. L E N I N
whiteguards, probably without realising it, we have never
for a moment shut our eyes to the fact that every word
uttered here will be misinterpreted, that the agents of the
whiteguards will carefully take note of our admissions.
But we say: let them! We shall benefit far more from the
straightforward and candid truth, because we are sure that
although this truth is harsh, nevertheless, if it is clearly
heard, every class-conscious worker, every working peasant,
will draw the only correct conclusion that can be drawn
from it.
In the long run, they will draw from it the only possible
conclusion that our cause is close to victory all over the
world, and desperately hard as the conditions of the masses
of the working people may be, weary, starving and exhausted
as they are by four years of imperialist war and another two
years of the most frightful Civil War—grave and acute though
the situation may be at the present time, we have the most
serious chances of gaining victory not only in Russia, but
all over the world. That is why, although the next four or
five months will be very severe, we shall once again succeed
in overcoming our difficulties, and thus prove to our enemies,
prove to the combined capitalists of the whole world, that
their attack on Russia must fail.
At the present moment they are undoubtedly operating
according to a preconceived plan, making attempts in the
West and the East to crush us by force of arms so as to save
Krasnov’s doomed gangs. Yesterday we received news of the
capture of Mariupol. Thus, Rostov is caught in a half-circle.
In short, the Entente countries are exerting all their
efforts to rescue Krasnov and to strike us a severe blow this
very spring. They are undoubtedly operating in agreement
with Hindenburg. A comrade from Latvia told us about the
conditions under which our Lettish comrades are living.
The greater part of the country has suffered misfortunes such
as Moscow workers cannot conceive—the misfortunes of invasion and the repeated devastation of the countryside by
hordes of moving troops. The Germans are now marching on
Dvinsk in order to cut off Riga. In the North they are being
assisted by the Estonian whiteguards using money sent by
Britain, and with the aid of volunteers sent by the Swedes
and Danes, who are entirely in the pay of the multimillion-
PLENARY MEETING OF MOSCOW SOVIET
257
aires of Britain, France and America. They are operating
according to a common plan which is quite clear to us; they
are taking advantage of the fact that by their bloody suppressions in Germany they have weakened the movement of
the Spartacists and revolutionaries. And although they realise that they are at their last gasp, they, nevertheless, find
the situation sufficiently opportune to place some troops
at Hindenburg’s disposal, to step up the attack on tormented
and tortured Latvia from the west, and to threaten us. On
the other hand, Kolchak has achieved a series of victories
in the east, and is thus paving the way for the last and most
decisive onslaught of the Entente countries.
And as has always been the case, they are not confining
themselves to an attack from without, they are operating
inside this country by means of plots, rebellions, attempts
at bomb-throwing and blowing up the water main in
Petrograd, which you read about in the newspapers, attempts
to dismantle railway lines, such as those made not far from
Samara, which is now the main line that supplies us with
grain from the East. Part of this grain we lost; it was captured by Kolchak. Attempts were made to damage the permanent way of the Kursk-Kharkov Railway, on which we
were beginning to transport the coal the Red Army had
recaptured in the Donets Basin. When all this is taken together, it becomes clear that the Entente countries, the
French imperialists and multimillionaires, are making their
last attempt to crush Soviet power by force of arms.
And the Mensheviks and the Right and Left SocialistRevolutionaries still fail to realise that the struggle is
drawing to a close and that we are engaged in a most desperate and relentless war; they continue to advocate either
strikes or the cessation of the Civil War, which in any case
is helping the whiteguards. I shall speak about them later
on; at present I merely want to show that the situation is
really grave.
This spring all the forces of the international capitalists
want to fight the last battle with us. Fortunately, they are
the forces of a decrepit, dying, hopelessly sick old man—international capitalism. But be that as it may, very big military forces have been mustered against us; Kolchak, in particular, is now bringing up all his reserves against us, his
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gangs of volunteer whiteguards are of imposing dimensions,
and he is receiving the assistance of Britain and America in
the form of vast quantities of arms and munitions. That is
why the present situation demands a clear realisation of the
difficulties that face the Soviet Republic.
We are convinced that the masses of the working people
understand what the war is about. They know that the next
few months will decide the fate of our revolution, and to
a large extent of the world revolution. They understand
that the attempts of the capitalists to crush Soviet Russia
have become so fierce, that they are attacking us so furiously, because they realise that in their own countries they are
faced by the same enemy—the Bolshevik movement. The
growth of the movement in those countries is equally rapid
and irresistible.
Our difficulties in food and transport make our position
particularly grave and compel us again and again to appeal
for the aid of all class-conscious workers. For four years the
transport system was gradually ruined by the imperialist war,
and in Russia, a backward country, traces of this have not
yet been removed, and it will take many months, if not
years, of persevering effort to remove them. But it is impossible to work without fuel. Only lately have we begun to receive coal from the Donets Basin. You know that the British
have robbed us of our Baku oil supplies. They have captured
many of the ships in the Caspian Sea, they have occupied
Grozny and are preventing us from using the oil. Neither
industry nor the railways can work without fuel. We must
exert our efforts to the utmost.
Once again we say to all our comrades that we must enlist
larger forces for work on food supplies and transport. The
transport situation is such that in Eastern Russia, beyond
the Volga, we have accumulated millions of poods of grain—
10 to 20 million poods have already been acquired and are
in store—but cannot transport it. We lost part of this grain
as Kolchak’s troops advanced, captured Ufa and compelled
our forces to retreat. This loss is a very severe one, and we
feel it very much. Transport work calls for the utmost exertion of effort; at every meeting the workers should ask themselves how they can help to improve transport. Cannot
women do the work here in place of the men, and the men be
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259
sent either to the repair shops or to help the railwaymen?
The workers are the best judges of what should be done, because they know which men to put on which job. Practical
people know best, and they must devise new ways and means
of assisting. We hope, we are convinced, that our Commissariat of Railways, in conjunction with the Commissariat of
Food, have already achieved a certain degree of success. No
matter what lies our enemies may spread, this goods transport month during which passenger traffic is suspended has
already brought about an improvement; but ten times more
effort must be exerted to achieve greater success. Some figures
were published in yesterday’s issue of Izvestia, the most
important of which I will here quote. At the beginning of
March, an average of 118 carloads of food of which 25 consisted of grain, were arriving in Moscow every day. By the end
of March, the average daily arrivals had increased to 209
carloads of food, of which 47 contained grain. This is an
almost twofold increase. It proves that the stern measure of
suspending passenger traffic is correct and justified, and shows
that we have assisted the starving population of Moscow,
Petrograd and of the whole industrial region. But this is
by no means all that can be done. And later, when the roads
become quite impassable, we shall be faced with a much more
difficult and hungry time. That is why we say that in this
field the most unrelaxing, energetic efforts must be made.
Mainly, we must rely upon the masses of the workers and not
count upon the intellectuals who, although they have come
to work for us, have a large number of useless people among
them.
We must also reckon with the situation in the Ukraine.
During the year when the entire Ukraine was occupied by
the Germans, and the whole of the Don region was in a
sorry state, we suffered a great deal. Now, however, our
position is improving. In the Ukraine there are 258 million poods of grain, of which 100 million have already
been earmarked for delivery. But the whole trouble is that
the Ukrainian peasants have been frightfully intimidated
by the Germans and by German looting. I have heard that
the peasants there have been so intimidated by the Germans
that although they know what the position of the Soviet
power is here, they still hesitate to seize the landed estates.
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Meanwhile, the time is approaching for spring field work;
but the Ukrainian peasants have suffered the horrors of German looting to such an extent that to this day they are extremely irresolute. I must say that guerrilla warfare has been
going on there all the time. In the South it is still going on.
There are no regular troops there, owing to which complete
victory has not yet been won. We have moved our regular
troops in, but this is not enough. We must greatly intensify
our efforts, and that is why I insist that at every meeting
of workers the question of food supplies and the question
of transport definitely must be raised. In the very near
future we have to decide the question of how to relieve the
situation, and how to utilise what is now available.
We must bear firmly in mind that only with the aid of the
forces of the working class can we stand firmly on our feet,
and achieve our brilliant victories; and that is why we must
send the best forces of the proletariat to the front. We must
send leading functionaries to the front and if some office
suffers as a result of it, we shall, of course, sustain some loss,
but it will not be fatal. If there is a shortage of workers in
the army, however, that will certainly be fatal. A defect in
our army up to now has been that it lacks cohesion and is
not sufficiently organised; all help in this sphere must come
from the workers, and on them we must place all our hopes.
Only those workers who have gone through the whole struggle, who can relate all their experiences and all they have
suffered can influence the army and turn the peasants into
the politically-conscious fighters that we need.
That is why we have come here again and decided to call
you all together to inform you of the serious state of our
transport system, due to the general grave position that we
are in. We stress the importance of our holding out for another three or four months, and that only then will complete
victory be ours. But for this we need forces. Where are these
forces to be found? Is it not clear that only the workers,
those who have borne the whole burden of the chaos, bore the
whole burden when the struggle changed to whiteguard invasions and thereby acquired great experience—is it not clear
that only these workers, only these vanguard contingents,
can help us? We know perfectly well that they are terribly
exhausted, that they are worn out by the superhuman efforts
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261
they are called upon to make. We know all this, but nevertheless, we now say to you here that we must strain every
nerve, we must concentrate our minds on rallying all forces
to achieve a brilliant victory for the revolution. We are now
entering the most difficult, the most trying period, and we
must act like revolutionaries. We must recruit our forces
from the masses of the working people.
Yesterday a meeting was held of the influential leaders
of the trade union movement—both the Moscow and the
national leaders. And at this meeting everybody agreed
that it is necessary, at the present moment, to enlist for this
work the middle stratum of workers, whom everybody has
up to now regarded as being incapable of this type of work.
Now, however, it is perfectly clear that we must send this
middle stratum to relieve our exhausted functionaries.
Before doing so, however, those who have been engaged in
this work up to now must instruct the newcomers. We must
husband our forces, and for a time we must send the middle
stratum of workers to take the place of our leading functionaries. We must send tens of thousands of such workers into
the field. We must not be afraid that they will not do the
work as well as the experienced functionaries did. If we put
them into responsible positions, then the mistakes that they
may make at first will not have serious consequences. The
important thing for us is to put them in the foremost responsible posts. There they will be able to exert an effort and develop their activities, because they will be able to operate
confidently, they will know that they are backed by experienced leading workers who have already had a year’s experience of work in Russia. They will know that at critical
moments these more experienced comrades will come to
their aid and ease their task. This new stratum of workers
will be able to do their work well if the advanced workers
promote them to leading positions. We can do this without
causing any damage, because this large stratum has a proletarian instinct, a proletarian understanding and sense of
duty. We may rely upon it, and we may say that it will
help us in a time of difficulty. It is a specific feature of Russia that in every critical situation she has always been able
to find masses of people who could be moved forward, who
were a reserve in which she could find new forces when the
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old forces began to grow thin. Yes, the advanced workers
are overtired, and the next contingent will not do the work
so well; but that is not disastrous, we shall not suffer from it,
we shall not ruin our cause if we send these new forces
into the field, guide them, and not allow our cause to
die.
Under these circumstances I must speak about the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. Lately, the Soviet
government has begun to close down their newspapers and
to arrest them. Some worker comrades, seeing this, say:
“So those Bolsheviks”—I among that number—“who induced
us to make certain concessions to the petty-bourgeois
democrats were wrong. What was the use of making these
concessions if we must now close down their newspapers
and arrest them? Is this consistency?”
My answer is this. In a country like Russia, where agriculture is concentrated in the hands of the petty-bourgeois
elements, we cannot hold out for long without the support of
this petty-bourgeois stratum. At the present time, this
stratum is marching towards the goal not by a straight road,
but in zigzags. If I am pursuing an enemy who is retreating
not by a straight road but in zigzags, then I, too, must proceed in zigzags in order to overtake him. To speak in the
language of politics, the petty-bourgeois masses stand between
labour and capital, and these masses must be beaten a hundred times to make them understand that the alternative is
either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of
the working class. Those who are aware of this, understand
the present situation. The workers understand it. Experience and a whole series of observations have taught them
that only one or the other of these two systems of government
is possible—either the absolute power of the working class,
or the absolute power of the bourgeoisie—there can be no
middle, or third, course. The working class learned this long
ago from its strike and revolutionary struggle; The petty
bourgeoisie cannot learn this at once; hundreds of everyday
facts have failed to teach and accustom the petty bourgeoisie to this idea, and they continue to dream of uniting with
the big bourgeoisie; for they cannot understand that either
the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie is inevitable.
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263
Experience of Kolchak taught the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks that it was no accident that in the
midst of a furious and desperate struggle conducted with
foreign assistance, democracy had nothing to give. Two
forces are operating upon them—and there are no other
forces but these—either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,
or the power and complete dictatorship of the working class;
no middle course was ever of any use, nothing came of it
anywhere. Nor did anything come of the Constituent Assembly. This the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and
the petty bourgeoisie learned from their own experience.
When the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks said:
“We shall abandon Kolchak and all those who support him
and the intervention of the Entente,” it was not only hypocrisy. It was not only a political ruse, although some of these
people did think they would fool the Bolsheviks and get an
opportunity to play the old game again. We saw through
this ruse and, of course, took measures against it. But when
the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries said this, it
was not only hypocrisy and cunning; many of them did it
in good faith. Among them there is not only the group of
writers, but also a petty-bourgeois stratum of technicians,
engineers, and so forth. When the Mensheviks announced
that they were opposed to the intervention of the Entente,
we invited them to work with us, and they willingly accepted
our invitation. But now we are quite right in persecuting
them, persecuting the petty-bourgeois stratum, because this
stratum is extremely obtuse. This was revealed in the Kerensky period and also by their present conduct. When they
came to work for us they said they had abandoned politics,
and would work willingly. We told them in reply that we
needed Menshevik officials, because they were not embezzlers of state funds, and not Black Hundreds who worm their
way into our ranks, call themselves Communists and do us
mischief. If these people believe in the Constituent Assembly
we tell them to go on believing, not only in the Constituent
Assembly, but even in God, but do their work properly and
keep out of politics. An increasing number of them realise
that they have disgraced themselves in politics. They howled
that Soviet power was a monstrous invention, possible only
in barbarous Russia. They said that the dissolution of the
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Constituent Assembly was an act by barbarians whom tsarism
had produced. And this was repeated in Europe. Now news
comes from Europe that Soviet power is coming to take the
place of bourgeois Constituent Assemblies all over the world.
These are lessons that are being taught to all intellectuals
who come to work for us. We now have twice as many civil
servants working for us as we had six months ago. We have
gained by accepting these civil servants who do their work
better than Black Hundreds. When we invited them to come
to work for us they said they were afraid of Kolchak, they
preferred us, but would not help us, they said they would
talk like pure parliamentarians, just as if they were sitting
in a Constituent Assembly; and we shouldn’t dare to touch
them, because they were democrats. But we say to these
groups who talk about the Constituent Assembly that if
they talk like that much longer we shall pack them off to
Kolchak and to Georgia. (Applause.) Polemics are started,
and the opposition of a legal group takes shape. We shall
allow no opposition. The imperialists of the whole world
have got us by the throat, they are trying to defeat us by all
the force of an armed attack and we must fight a life-and-death
struggle. If you have come here to help us, then do so, but
if you are going to publish newspapers and incite the workers
to strike, and these strikes cause the death of our Red Army
men at the front, and every day of a strike causes tens of
thousands of our factory workers to suffer privations, pangs
of hunger—the pangs which are causing us so much concern—
then you may be right from the Constituent Assembly point
of view, but from the standpoint of our struggle and the responsibility we bear, you are wrong, you cannot help us, so
get out, go to Georgia, go to Kolchak, or else you will go to
prison. And that is what we shall do with them.
Comrades, I hope we shall all unanimously adopt the resolution to be submitted to you at the end of the meeting.
In it we have endeavoured to formulate the necessary instructions, the reasons for which I have given in my report. I should
now like to deal with two questions—the position of the
middle peasants, and the International situation, which is
extremely important.
We discussed the question of the middle peasants at our
Party Congress and decided on the line our Party should
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pursue towards them. Our Party elected to a responsible
post, the post of Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee, a post which is all the more responsible
for the fact that until recently it was occupied by that exceptionally talented organiser Comrade Sverdlov, for this
post our Party chose Comrade Kalinin, a St. Petersburg worker who still has connections with the rural districts. There
is a report in the newspapers today that a certain Comrade
Kalinin was assassinated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries,
but it is not this Kalinin. This shows what methods the Socialist-Revolutionaries resort to. Comrade Mikhail Ivanovich
Kalinin is a middle peasant from Tver Gubernia, which he
visits every year. The middle peasants constitute the largest stratum of the population, and their numbers have
increased since our revolution owing to the fact that we abolished the landed estates. The peasantry benefited by our
revolution because they seized all the landed estates and, as
a consequence, the number of middle peasants greatly increased. If there is discontent among the middle peasants,
we say that it is caused from above, and we must ascertain
to what extent it is legitimate, considering our lack of forces.
You, here in the capital, know how difficult it is to combat bureaucracy and red tape. We are obliged to employ the
old civil servants because no other are available. They must
be re-educated, taught; but this takes time. We may appoint
new workers to responsible posts in the food supply organisations, but there is still an exceedingly large number of old
civil servants in the State Control Commission, and we suffer
from red tape and bureaucracy. We are trying to appoint
new workers to take part in control in the Commissariat of
Railways and to work side by side with the experts. This
is the way we are combating bureaucracy and red tape. What
effort it costs, even here in Moscow! And what is going on
in the rural districts? There, people who call themselves
members of the Party are often scoundrels, whose lawlessness is most brazen. And how often we have to contend with
inexperienced people, who confuse the kulaks with the middle
peasants! A kulak is one who lives on the labour of others,
who robs others of the fruits of their labour, and takes
advantage of their poverty. The middle peasants do not exploit others and are not exploited themselves; they earn their
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livelihood on their small farms by their own labour. Not a
single socialist in the world ever proposed that the small
farmer should be deprived of his property. The small farmer
will exist for many years to come. No decrees will have any
effect here; we must wait until the peasants have learned to
be guided by experience. When they see that collective farming is far better, they will come over to our side. We must
win their confidence. Here we must wage a struggle against
abuses. We can fight only with the aid of the urban workers,
because they have close connections with the peasants, and
they can supply us with hundreds of thousands of functionaries. We know perfectly well that no appointments of
comrades to high posts, no circulars, and no decrees will
be of any avail, and that the workers of every group, of every
circle, must set to work themselves—they have special
connections with the rural districts.
I said that the first rule for the workers must be—exert all
efforts to help to prosecute the war. The second rule should
be—help the middle peasants by keeping in contact with
them, so as not to allow a single serious enemy attack in the
rural districts to go unpunished. We must point out that the
urban workers are bringing assistance to the middle peasants,
their comrades, because the middle peasants are also workers, but workers who have been reared under other conditions, who live isolated from each other in rural ignorance
from which it is more difficult for them to extricate themselves.
And we must know that the perseverance of our comrades
will establish contacts with the middle peasants. An infinitesimal number of peasants will become kulaks, will
foment rebellion—that we know. That being the case, how
can we help, how can we win the confidence of the middle
peasants, how can we help them to combat all sorts of abuses?
If we have done little in this field it is not our fault, for
we had to fight the bourgeoisie. This has to be realised.
Every worker must put the question this way—we, the
workers as a whole, have contacts with the middle peasants,
and we will utilise these contacts, and see to it that every
middle peasant learns of our help not only from the appointment of Comrade Kalinin, but also from the fact that he is
obtaining some real assistance, if only slight, if only in the
form of slight but comradely advice. The peasants will now
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appreciate such assistance more than anything else. They
must be made to understand why the difficulties of our position prevent us from giving them the assistance they need,
assistance in the form of urban culture. The peasants need
city-made goods, urban culture, and we must give them these
things. Only when the proletariat gives the peasants this
form of assistance will they realise that the help of the workers is different from that of the exploiters. To help the peasants to rise to the urban level—this is the task that every
worker who has connections with the rural districts must set
himself. The urban workers must say to themselves that
now, in the spring, when the food situation has become
particularly acute, they must go to the peasants’ assistance.
And if everybody does even a tiny share of this work, we
shall see that our edifice has not merely a facade, and that
our cause of safeguarding Soviet power will be achieved;
for the peasants say: “Long live Soviet power, long live the
Bolsheviks, but down with the communia!” They curse the
“communia” that is being organised in a stupid way and
forced upon them. They are suspicious of everything that is
forced upon them, and quite rightly so. We must go to the
middle peasants, we must help them, teach them, but only
in the field of science and socialism. In the field of agriculture we must learn from them. There you have the task that
confronts us directly.
We now come to the international situation. I say that
the imperialists of Britain, France and America are making
their last attempt to bring us to our knees, but they will
fail. Difficult as the situation is, we can say with confidence
that we shall defeat international imperialism. We shall
defeat the multimillionaires of the whole world. There are
two reasons why we shall beat them. First, because they are
wild beasts who are so absorbed in fighting among themselves,
that they continue to bite each other and fail to see that
they are on the brink of a precipice; secondly, because Soviet
power is growing uninterruptedly all over the world. Not a
day passes but what we read about this in the newspapers.
Today we read a message wirelessed from an American press
office in Lyons to the effect that the Committee of Ten has
now been reduced, and that there are now only four—Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando. These are
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the leaders of four nations, but even they cannot reach an
agreement. Britain and America do not want France to have
the coal profits. They are wild beasts who have plundered
the whole world and are now quarrelling over the prey.
These four men have shut themselves up in close conclave
so that, God forbid, rumours may not get about—they are
all such great democrats—but they themselves set rumours
afloat by sending out wireless messages about not agreeing
to give up the coal profits. A French comrade who saw
the French prisoners of war told me that these prisoners
say: “We were told that we must go to Russia to fight the
Germans because the Germans had destroyed our country.
But now there is an armistice with Germany; whom are we
going to fight?” They were not told a word about that. The
number of people who are asking themselves this question
is day by day growing into millions and millions. These
people have experienced the horrors of the imperialist war,
and they say: “What are we going to fight for?” In the past,
the Bolsheviks taught them what they were fighting for in
underground leaflets; but now the imperialists send out
wireless messages saying that Britain does not agree to allow
France to have the coal profits. Thus, as a French journalist
expressed it, they are rushing from room to room in a vain
effort to solve the problem. They are trying to decide who
should get most, and they have been fighting each other for
five months. These wild beasts have lost their self-control,
and will go on fighting until nothing is left of them except
their tails. And we say that our international position,
which at first was so precarious that they could have crushed
us in several weeks, is now, when they are quarrelling over
the loot and are beginning to fly at each others’ throats—now
our position is much better. They promised the soldiers that
if they conquered Germany they would receive untold benefits. They are arguing whether to compel Germany to pay
sixty or eighty milliard. This is an extremely important
question of principle, an extremely interesting one, especially if the workers or peasants are told about it. But if they
go on arguing for long they will not get even one milliard.
This is what is most interesting!
That is why we say, without exaggerating in the least, not
even as socialists, but simply and soberly weighing up the
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269
forces that are mustered against us, that the position of the
Soviet Republic is improving day by day and hour by hour.
Our enemies cannot agree among themselves. Five months
have passed since they won their victory, but they have not
concluded peace. Recently, the French Chamber again voted
hundreds of millions for war preparations. They are digging
their own grave, and there are people over there who will
lower them into this grave and pile plenty of earth over them.
(Applause.) This is because the Soviet movement is growing
in all countries. And the Hungarian revolution has shown
that when we say that we are fighting not only for ourselves,
but for Soviet power all over the world, that blood of the
Red Army men is being shed not only for the sake of our
starving comrades, but for the victory of Soviet power all
over the world—the example of Hungary has shown that
this is not merely prophecies and promises, but the most
actual and immediate reality.
In Hungary the revolution was most unusual in form.
The Hungarian Kerensky, who over there is called Károlyi,
voluntarily resigned, and the Hungarian compromisers—the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries—realised that
they must go to the prison where our Hungarian comrade
Béla Kun, one of the best of the Hungarian Communists, was
confined. They went to him and said: “You must take power!”
(Applause.) The bourgeois government resigned. The bourgeois
socialists, the Hungarian Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, merged with the Hungarian Bolshevik Party and
formed a united party and a united government. Comrade Béla
Kun, our comrade, and a Communist who had trodden the
whole practical path of Bolshevism in Russia, said to me when
I spoke to him by wireless: “I have not got a majority in the
government, but I shall win because the masses are behind
me, and we are convening a congress of Soviets.” This is a
revolution of world-historical importance.
Up to now all the European workers have been told lies
about Soviet Russia. They have been told that there is no
government but sheer anarchy in Russia. The Bolsheviks
are just a crowd of quarrelsome people. Recently, the French
Minister, Pichon, said about Soviet Russia, “It is anarchy,
they are violators, usurpers!” “Look at Russia,” said the German Mensheviks to their workers. “War, famine and ruin!
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Is this the sort of socialism you want?” And in this way they
have been intimidating the workers. But Hungary was an
example of a revolution born in a different way. Hungary
will undoubtedly have to go through a severe struggle against
the bourgeoisie—that is inevitable. But the fact is that when
those beasts, the British and French imperialists, foresaw
the possibility of revolution in Hungary they wanted to
crush it, to prevent its birth. The difficulty of our position
was that we had to give birth to Soviet power in opposition
to patriotism. We had to break down this patriotism and
conclude the Brest peace. This was a most desperate, furious
and sanguinary operation. The bourgeoisie in the neighbouring countries realised who would have to govern. Who, if
not the Soviet? It was like the old days when kings, kinglets and princes saw that their power was waning and they
said, “We must have a constitution; let the bourgeoisie come
and govern!” And if the king was feeble, he was given a pension, or a sinecure. What the kings or kinglets experienced
fifty or sixty years ago, the world bourgeoisie is now experiencing. When the British and French imperialists submitted unprecedented demands to the Hungarian capitalists,
the latter said, “We cannot fight. The people will not follow
us; but we are Hungarian patriots and we want to resist.
What kind of government should we have? A Soviet government.” The Hungarian bourgeoisie admitted to the world
that it had resigned voluntarily and that the only power in
the world capable of guiding the nation in a moment of crisis was Soviet power. (Applause.) That is why the Hungarian revolution, owing to its having been born in a totally
different way from ours, will reveal to the whole world that
which was concealed in Russia—i.e., that Bolshevism is
bound up with a new, proletarian, workers’ democracy, that
is taking the place of the old parliament. Time was when
the workers were deceived and enslaved by capital. Today,
world Soviet power is coming into being to take the place
of the old bourgeois parliament; and this Soviet power has
won the sympathies of all workers because it is the power of
the working people, the power of millions who rule and
govern themselves. Perhaps they govern badly, as we do in
Russia, but our conditions are exceedingly difficult. In a
country where the bourgeoisie will not offer such furious re-
PLENARY MEETING OF MOSCOW SOVIET
271
sistance, the tasks of the Soviet government will be easier;
it will be able to operate without the violence, without the
bloodshed that was forced upon us by the Kerenskys and the
imperialists. We shall reach our goal even by this, more difficult, road. Russia may have to make greater sacrifices than
other countries; this is not surprising considering the chaos
that we inherited. Other countries will travel by a different,
more humane road, but at the end of it lies the same Soviet
power. That is why the example of Hungary is of decisive
importance.
People learn from experience. It is impossible to prove merely by words that Soviet power is just. The example of Russia alone was not sufficiently intelligible to the workers of
all countries. They knew that there was a Soviet there, they
were all in favour of the Soviet, but they were daunted
by the horrors of the sanguinary struggle. The example of
Hungary will be decisive for the proletarian masses, for the
European proletariat and working peasants. In a moment
of difficulty there is no one to rule the country but the
Soviet government.
We remember what old people say, “The children have
grown up, they have made their way in the world, now we
can die. ” But we do not intend to die. We are marching to
victory. But when we see children like Hungary, where Soviet power already exists, we say that we have done our
work not only on a Russian, but also on an international
scale; that we shall surmount all our desperate difficulties
and win full victory, so that we shall live to see the day
when the world Soviet republic will be added to the Russian
and the Hungarian Soviet Republics. (Applause.)
Pravda Nos. 7 6 and 7 7 ,
April 9 and 1 0 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the verbatim report
272
V. I. L E N I N
2
RESOLUTION ON THE REPORT
ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
OF THE SOVIET REPUBLIC
The Soviet Republic, in the harsh but glorious struggle
it is waging at the head of all peoples, is entering the most
difficult period of its existence. The next few months will
be months of crisis. The Entente is making its last, desperate effort to crush us by force of arms. The food situation
is becoming extremely acute. The transport system is in a
serious state.
Only the greatest effort can save us. Victory is nevertheless
fully possible. The revolution in Hungary provides conclusive proof of the rapid growth of the Soviet movement in Europe, and of its impending victory. We have more allies in
all countries than we ourselves imagine. To achieve the final
victory we must hold on for another four or five months,
which, perhaps, will be the bitterest and most dangerous.
And in days like these, reckless men and adventurers who
call themselves Mensheviks and Left and Right SocialistRevolutionaries, while paying lip-service to Soviet power
and protesting against the armed intervention of the Entente,
are fomenting strikes or agitating for concessions to freedom
to trade or for the cessation of the Civil War, forgetting that
we have offered peace to all, and that our war is a just, legitimate and unavoidable war of defence. Obviously, by this
sort of agitation they give most active and effective assistance to the whiteguards, who are making a last effort to
force us into disaster. The meeting condemns these masked
enemies of the people.
PLENARY MEETING OF MOSCOW SOVIET
273
It declares to all those Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who are really prepared to help us in our difficult
struggle, that the workers’ and peasants’ government will
grant them full liberty, and guarantee them all the rights
of citizens of the Soviet Republic.
This meeting declares that the task of the Soviet Government at the present time is to wage relentless war upon those
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who, like the
literary and political groups, Vsegda Vperyod! and Dyelo
Naroda, 48 are actually impeding our struggle and are the
allies of our inveterate enemies. This meeting calls upon all
working-class organisations, all proletarians, and all working peasants to exert every effort to repel the enemies of
Soviet power, to defend that power and to improve the food
supply and transport systems.
For this purpose, this meeting deems it necessary:
(1) To enlist members of the middle section—i.e., people
who are less experienced than the advanced workers and
peasants—to replace the weary advanced section.
(2) To engage still further contingents of the advanced
and other sections of workers on food supplies, transport,
and in the army.
(3) To enlist the largest possible number of politicallyconscious workers and peasants to work at the People’s
Commissariat of Railways and at the State Control Commission, in order to improve the functioning of these bodies
and to eliminate bureaucracy and red tape.
(4) To transfer the largest possible number of people
from the starving cities to agricultural work in the rural
districts—to vegetable gardens, to the Ukraine, to the Don
region, and so forth, so as to increase the output of grain and
other agricultural produce.
(5) To exert all efforts to help the middle peasants, to put
a stop to the abuses from which they suffer so often, and to
render them comradely assistance. Those Soviet officials
who fail to understand this policy—which is the only correct
policy—or who are unable to pursue it, must be immediately dismissed.
(6) The task that confronts everybody at the present time
is to combat all signs of weariness, faint-heartedness and
vacillation. We must imbue all hearts with courage and
274
V. I. L E N I N
firmness, increase political consciousness, and strengthen
comradely discipline.
The working class and the peasantry of Russia have borne
incredible burdens. During the past few months their sufferings have been more acute than ever. But this meeting
declares that the will of the workers is not broken, that the
working class is still at its post, that it is convinced that it
will overcome all difficulties, and that it will maintain at
all costs the victory of the Soviet Socialist Republic in
Russia, and throughout the world.
Pravda No. 7 3 ,
April 4, 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Pravda text, verified
with the manuscript
275
LETTER TO THE PETROGRAD WORKERS
ON AID FOR THE EASTERN FRONT
To the Petrograd workers
Comrades, the situation on the Eastern Front has become
extremely grave. Today, Kolchak captured the Votkinsk
Iron Works and Bugulma is in danger. Evidently, Kolchak
will advance still farther.
The danger is a serious one.
Today, the Council of People’s Commissars will decide
on a number of urgent measures to assist the Eastern Front;
we are increasing the work of agitation.
We request the Petrograd workers to do everything possible,
to mobilise all forces to help the Eastern Front.
The soldier workers there will obtain food for themselves,
and will be able to send food parcels to their families.
The main thing, however, is that there the fate of the revolution is being decided.
By victory there, we shall bring the war to a close, for the
Whites will get no more assistance from abroad. In the South,
victory is near. We cannot withdraw forces from the South
until we have won there completely.
Hence, help the Eastern Front!
Both the Soviet of Workers’ and Red Army Deputies and
the trade unions must exert every effort to mobilise all forces
and render all possible assistance to the Eastern Front.
I am certain, comrades, that the Petrograd workers will
set an example to the whole of Russia.
With communist greetings,
Lenin
Moscow, April 10, 1919
Petrogradskaya Pravda No. 8 1 ,
April 1 2 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the newspaper text
276
THESES OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIKS)
ON THE SITUATION ON THE EASTERN FRONT
Kolchak’s victories on the Eastern Front are creating an
extremely grave danger for the Soviet Republic. Our efforts
must be exerted to the utmost to smash Kolchak.
The Central Committee therefore instructs all Party
organisations to concentrate their efforts first and foremost on
the following measures, which must be carried out by the
Party organisations and, in particular, by the trade unions
in order to enlist wider sections of the working class in the
active defence of the country.
1. Support in every way the mobilisation ordered on April
11, 1919.
All the forces of the Party and the trade unions must
be mobilised immediately so as to render, within the next
few days, without the slightest delay, the most energetic
assistance to the mobilisation decreed by the Council of
People’s Commissars on April 10, 1919.
The mobilised men must at once be made to see the active
participation of the trade unions and to feel that they have
the support of the working class.
In particular, it must be made clear to every mobilised
man that his immediate departure for the front will mean an
improvement in his food situation; firstly, because of the
better ration received by the soldiers in the grain-producing
front-line zone; secondly, because of the fact that the food
brought into the hungry gubernias will be distributed among
fewer people; thirdly, because of the widely organised dispatch of food parcels by Red Army men in the front areas
to their families at home.
THESES OF THE C.C. R.C.P.(B.)
277
The Central Committee demands of every Party and trade
union organisation a weekly report, however brief, on what
has been done to help mobilisation and the mobilised.
2. In the areas near the front, especially in the Volgaside
region, trade union members must be armed to a man, and
in the event of a shortage of arms, they must all be mobilised to render every possible aid to the Red Army, to replace
casualties, etc.
Such towns as Pokrovsk, where the trade unions themselves decided to mobilise immediately 50 per cent of their
members, should serve us as an example. The metropolitan
cities and the large industrial centres must not lag behind
Pokrovsk.
The trade unions everywhere must, using their own forces
and means, carry out a check registration of their members
in order that all who are not absolutely indispensable at
home may be sent to fight for the Volga and the Urals territory.
3. The most serious attention must be given to intensifying agitational work, especially among those to be mobilised,
those already mobilised and Red Army men. The usual methods of agitation—lectures, meetings, etc.—are not enough;
agitation should be carried on among Red Army men by
workers, singly or in groups; such groups of ordinary workers, members of trade unions, should be appointed specifically to barracks, Red Army units and factories. The trade
unions must institute a check to see that every one of their
members takes part in house-to-house agitation, distribution
of leaflets and personal talks.
4. All male office workers are to be replaced by women, for
which purpose a new registration, both Party and trade
union, shall be carried out.
Special cards shall be introduced for all trade union members and all office workers, indicating the part they are
personally taking in assisting the Red Army.
5. Aid Bureaus or Committees of Action, local and central, are to be instituted immediately through the trade
unions, factory committees, Party organisations, co-operative societies, etc. Their addresses shall be published. The
public shall be informed of them in the widest possible manner. Every man liable to mobilisation, every Red Army man,
278
V. I. L E N I N
and every person desirous of leaving for the South, for the
Don or the Ukraine for food supply work should know that
there is an aid bureau or a committee of action nearby; that
it is accessible to every worker and peasant and he can obtain
advice or instruction there, that contact with the army
authorities will be facilitated for him, etc.
It shall be the special task of these bureaus to help to
equip the Red Army. We can greatly increase the strength
of our army if we improve the supply of arms, clothing, etc.
And among the population there are still considerable quantities of arms which have been hidden or are not being used
for the army. There are still considerable factory stocks of
goods of various kinds needed by the army, and they must be
quickly found and dispatched to the army. The army organisations in charge of supplies should be given immediate,
broad and effective assistance by the general public. Every
effort must be devoted to this matter.
6. The trade unions must organise the extensive enlistment of peasants, especially of peasant youths in the nonagricultural gubernias, for the ranks of the Red Army, for
the formation of food detachments and for the food army in
the Don and the Ukraine.
This activity can and should be expanded to many times
its present volume; it helps both to assist the hungry
population of the metropolitan cities and the non-agricultural gubernias and to strengthen the Red Army.
7. As regards the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Party line in the present situation is to imprison
those who assist Kolchak, whether deliberately or unwittingly. In our republic of working people we shall not tolerate
anybody who does not help us by deeds in the fight against
Kolchak. Among the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries there are people who are willing to render such help.
These people should be encouraged and given practical jobs,
principally in the way of technical assistance to the Red
Army in the rear, and their work must be strictly supervised.
The Central Committee appeals to all Party organisations
and all trade unions to set to work in a revolutionary way,
and not confine themselves to the old stereotyped methods.
We can defeat Kolchak. We can gain an early and final
victory, because our victories in the South and the inter-
THESES OF THE C.C. R.C.P.(B.)
279
national situation, which is daily improving and changing
in our favour, guarantee our ultimate triumph.
We must exert every effort, display revolutionary energy,
and Kolchak will be rapidly defeated. The Volga, the Urals
and Siberia can and must be defended and regained.
Central Committee
of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Written April 1 1 , 1 9 1 9
Published in Pravda No. 7 9 ,
April 1 2 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the manuscript
PLENARY MEETING OF THE ALL -RUSSIA
CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS 49
APRIL 11, 1919
Brief report published
in Izvestia No. 8 0 ,
April 1 3 , 1 9 1 9
First published in full in 1 9 3 2
Published according to
the verbatim report
A I S S U R- L L A E H T F O G N I T E E M Y R A N E L P
94
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283
1
REPORT ON THE TASKS OF THE TRADE UNIONS
IN THE MOBILISATION FOR THE EASTERN FRONT
Comrades, you, of course, are all familiar with the decree published today on the mobilisation in the non-agricultural gubernias, and there is no need for me to deal at
length with the reasons for this decree at a meeting like
this; we may take it that you are well aware from what you
have read in the newspapers that Kolchak’s victories on
the Eastern Front have suddenly made our position
extremely grave.
You are aware that, in view of the situation at the
front, all government instructions have for a long time
been directed towards concentrating our main forces on
the Southern Front. Krasnov’s forces were concentrated
in such large numbers on the Southern Front, and the
avowedly counter-revolutionary Cossacks, who since
1905 have remained as monarchist as ever, were so strongly
entrenched there, that without a victory on the Southern
Front, the consolidation of Soviet proletarian power at
the centre would have been impossible. It was in the South,
in the Ukraine, that the Allied imperialists attempted to
launch an offensive, and wanted to convert the Ukraine
into a springboard against the Soviet Republic, making
the Southern Front still more important for us; consequently, we have no reason to repent of having concentrated
our attention and our forces on the Southern Front. I think
that we were not mistaken in so doing. The latest news
about the capture of Odessa, and the news received today
about the capture of Simferopol and Eupatoria show the
situation there; this region, which has played the decisive
role throughout the war, has now been cleared.
284
V. I. L E N I N
You know perfectly well what tremendous effort it is
costing to continue the Civil War after four years of imperialist war, how weary the masses are, how incredibly vast
the sacrifices which the workers have been making during
two years of Civil War. You know that this war is imposing
an immense strain upon us. This concentration of all forces
on the Southern Front greatly weakened the Eastern Front.
We were unable to send reinforcements there and the army
on the Eastern Front endured incredible hardships and sustained heavy losses. It fought for months, and a number
of comrades working there sent us telegrams stating that
it was becoming exceedingly difficult for the embattled
Red Army to bear such an extremely heavy strain; the
strength of our forces on the Eastern Front had been overtaxed. Meanwhile, Kolchak, by means of tsarist or “big
stick” discipline, had mobilised the Siberian peasants.
He weeded all men who had seen active service out of his
army, and succeeded in concentrating there the old officers,
as leaders, and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.
Relying on these, he has lately achieved successes on the
Eastern Front which place the Volga in jeopardy; it must
be admitted that to force him back we shall have to go all
out. Forces must be sent from here, for we cannot shift
any from the South; that would mean leaving the field to
the main enemy, who has not yet been completely smashed.
Since our victories in the South and in the Don region,
and because of the international situation, our general
position has been improving daily. Not a day passes but
what we receive news which indicates that our international
situation is improving.
Three months ago, the British, French and American
capitalists not only appeared to be, but actually were, a
tremendous force, which, of course, could have crushed us
had they at that time been in a position to use their vast
material resources against us—they could have but did
not and now it is obvious that they cannot. Their recent
defeat in Odessa clearly shows that vast as the material
resources of the imperialists were, from the purely military
point of view, their campaign against Russia has collapsed
completely. If we bear in mind that there are Soviet Republics in the heart of Europe, and that the growth of the
PLENUM OF THE ALL - RUSSIAN C.C.T.U.
285
Soviet form of government is becoming irresistible, we
may say without exaggeration, taking an absolutely sober
view of the situation, that our victory on an international
scale is absolutely certain.
If this were all, we could speak calmly, but in view of
Kolchak’s recent successes, it must be said that several
months of strenuous effort still lie ahead of us before we
can defeat his forces. There can be no doubt that we shall
fail if we stick to the old methods; during the eighteen
months of Soviet power our methods have become so familiar, sometimes even routine, that as a result, the energy
of the advanced section of the working class has been
largely exhausted. We do not shut our eyes to the extreme
weariness that is felt among certain sections of the working
class, and to the increasing difficulty of the struggle, but
now our prospects are much simpler and clearer. Even
those who do not side with Soviet power, and who regard
themselves as rather important figures in politics, clearly
see that on an international scale our victory is certain.
We have to go through one more phase of fierce civil war
against Kolchak. We have therefore decided that the AllRussia Central Council of Trade Unions—a most authoritative body, which unites the broad masses of the proletariat—should, on its part, propose a number of most
rigorous measures which should help us to finish off the
war within the next few months. This is quite feasible,
because our international situation is improving, we need
have no doubts on that score. The European and American
rear is in the best possible state for us, although five months
ago we could not even dream of such a thing. We might
say that Messrs. Wilson and Clemenceau have set out to
help us. The cables which every day bring us news about
their quarrels, about their desire to slam the door in each
other’s faces, show that these gentlemen are at each other’s
throats.
But the more clear it becomes that the victory of our
cause on an international scale is certain, the more desperate and fierce become the efforts of the Russian landowners, capitalists and kulaks who fled across the Urals.
This disreputable crowd is fighting desperately. You, of
course, have read in the newspapers about how far white-
286
V. I. L E N I N
guard terror has gone in Ufa; there is no doubt that these
whiteguard elements, these bourgeois, are staking everything on a last attempt. The bourgeoisie are desperate. They
believe that by their desperate attack they will compel us
to divert part of our forces from the decisive Southern
Front. We shall not do that, and we say openly to the workers that this involves ever greater efforts in the East.
Permit me to propose a number of practical measures
which, in my opinion, should create a regrouping of forces
and set the trade unions new and definite tasks, and which
I consider essential in view of the situation I have briefly
outlined to you. There is no need for me to deal with this
any further, you are all aware of it. It is possible in this
situation—looking at it most soberly—to put an end to
the war, both internal and international, within the next
few months. But during those few months we shall have
to bend every effort. The first task that should be set to
the trade unions is the following:
“1. Support in every way the mobilisation ordered on
April 11, 1919.
“All the forces of the Party and the trade unions must
be mobilised immediately so as to render, within the next
few days, without the slightest delay, the most energetic
assistance to the mobilisation decreed by the Council of
People’s Commissars on April 10, 1919.
“The mobilised men must at once be made to see the
active participation of the trade unions and to feel that they
have the support of the working class.
“In particular, it must be made clear to every mobilised
man that his immediate departure for the front will mean
an improvement in his food situation; firstly, because of
the better ration received by the soldiers in the grainproducing front-line zone; secondly, because of the fact
that the food brought into the hungry gubernias will be
distributed among fewer people; thirdly, because of the
widely organised dispatch of food parcels by Red Army men
in the front areas to their families at home....”
Of course, I have referred to the food situation here only
very briefly; but you all realise that this is our main,
internal difficulty, and were it not for the possibility of
linking up the mobilisation with our rapid advance in
PLENUM OF THE ALL - RUSSIAN C.C.T.U.
287
the areas near the front and the grain-producing districts,
with the organisation of the units there, and not here,
were it not for this possibility, the mobilisation would
be hopeless; that is to say, it would be no use hoping for
success. But at present we have this possibility. The mobilisation is to take place mainly in the non-agricultural
gubernias, in the districts where the workers and peasants
are suffering most from hunger. We can shift them primarily
to the Don—the whole of the Don region is now in our
hands, the fight against the Cossacks has been going on
for a long time; we shall be able to improve the food supplies of our advanced units on the spot, and also organise
the sending home of food parcels. Steps have already been
taken in this direction, and permission has been given to
send food parcels weighing twenty pounds twice a month.
An agreement on this point has been reached. Thus, the
privilege we were obliged to grant last year in the form of
the right to carry one-and-a-half poods 50 can be compared
with this wider measure, namely, the sending of food parcels, by means of which the men of the Red Army will be
able to support their families at home.
By developing activities of this nature we shall combine
assistance to the front with an improvement in the food
situation in the chief non-agricultural districts, which
are suffering most in this respect. Naturally, the dispatch
of men to the Don will be linked up with the movement
of men to the Volgaside area, where the enemy has now
inflicted such a severe blow on us that beyond the Volga,
in the East, we have already lost several million poods
of grain that had been collected. There, the war is directly
an out-and-out war for grain. The task of the trade unions
is to see to it that this mobilisation is not carried out on
the ordinary lines, but that it should be combined with
trade union assistance to the Soviets. The thesis I have
just read to you does not define this concretely enough.
I think that this all-round assistance should be at first
embodied in a series of tentative measures, which should
be followed by definite instructions and a practical plan
showing how the trade unions, by mobilising all their
forces, should promote the mobilisation in such a way
that it assumes the character of a major political measure
288
V. I. L E N I N
rather than a mere military and food supply measure, in
such a way that it is made the task of a working class which
realises that we can end the war within the next few months,
because on an international scale we are assured of the
arrival of fresh allies. Only proletarian organisations,
only trade unions, can do this. I cannot enumerate the
practical measures, I think that only the trade unions can
do it. They can carry out the task, making allowances for
specific local conditions, and organising the whole business
on a practical basis. Our job is to give the main political
directions to the working class, which must rally once
again and take cognisance of this bitter truth; there will
be new burdens to bear, but this is at the same time a truth
that indicates the real and practical way to overcome our
difficulties as quickly as possible. By sending large numbers
of workers to the fertile South, we shall reinforce our forces
there, and if the whiteguard and landowners’ forces count
on being able by their victories in the East to compel us
to weaken the South, I think we shall prove to them that
they are mistaken. I am quite sure that we shall not weaken
the South and shall be able to provide support for the East.
The enemy has mobilised the young men of Siberia and has
avoided taking men who had seen active service—he is
afraid of them and has mobilised the Siberian peasants.
That is his last effort, his last resource. He has no support
and no manpower. The Allies were unable to help him. It
was beyond their power.
That is why I appeal to the representatives of the trade
union movement to devote the greatest possible attention
to this question and to see to it that the mobilisation is
not carried out on the old lines. This must be a huge workingclass political campaign; it is not merely a military and
food supply campaign, but also a great political campaign.
If the situation is weighed up soberly in the light of
factors of the war and of class relationships, nobody can
doubt that the issue should be settled within the next few
months. To achieve this, the trade unions must not confine
themselves to activity within the old limits. If they do
they will be unable to carry out this task, which requires
activity on a wider scale. They must act not only as trade
unionists, but also as revolutionaries deciding the basic
PLENUM OF THE ALL - RUSSIAN C.C.T.U.
289
question of the Soviet Republic, a question similar to the
one decided in October—that of bringing the imperialist
war to a close and launching socialist construction. Today,
the trade unions must work as revolutionaries on a mass
scale; they must not keep within the old limits in settling
the practical question of ending the Civil War in Russia.
The end is very near, but it is extremely difficult. To proceed—
“2. In the areas near the front, especially in the Volgaside region, trade union members must be armed to a
man, and in the event of a shortage of arms, they must all
be mobilised to render every possible aid to the Red Army,
to replace casualties, etc.
“3. The most serious attention must be given to intensifying agitational work, especially among those to be mobilised, those already mobilised and Red Army men. The
usual methods of agitation—lectures, meetings, etc.—are
not enough; agitation should be carried on among Red
Army men by workers, singly or in groups; such groups
of ordinary workers, members of trade unions, should be
appointed specifically to barracks, Red Army units and
factories. The trade unions must institute a check to see
that every one of their members takes part in house-tohouse agitation, distribution of leaflets and personal talks.”
We, of course, have grown somewhat unaccustomed to
the methods of agitation we employed in the old days when
we as a party were persecuted, or were fighting for power.
Political power has placed a vast state machine in our
hands, and through it agitation has been organised on new
lines. During the past eighteen months it has been conducted on a different scale; but you know that because
of the chaos we inherited from the imperialist war and
which was intensified by the Civil War, and the terrible
difficulties caused by the invasion of a number of Russian
gubernias, our agitation has not done all that it should
have done. Compared with past agitation it has done wonders but it is not all that is needed, and things have not
been carried through to the end. Vast masses of peasants
and workers are practically untouched by our agitation.
That is why we must not keep within the old limits; under
no circumstances must we depend on our having state
290
V. I. L E N I N
Soviet organisations for this purpose. If we were to rely on
that, we would not be able to solve our problem. In this
respect we should recall the past, pay more attention to
personal initiative and say that if this personal initiative
is developed on a mass scale, we shall do more than we did
in the past, because the working class, even though most
of its members are exhausted, has now instinctively understood the nature of the task. Even the Mensheviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries who owing to their political ideology fought tooth and nail to prevent themselves from
understanding the situation, who hid behind an iron fence
and failed to understand reality—even these people now
realise that all over the world the struggle is going on
between the old bourgeois system and the new Soviet system. Ever since the German revolution revealed its real
character, ever since the German Government showed that
all it could do was murder the best leaders of the proletariat with the support of the social-patriots of the majority, and ever since Soviet power triumphed in a number
of European countries, this question has been settled in
practice. The question is—Soviet power or the old bourgeois order? It has been settled in practice on a historical
scale. The workers’ instinct decided the issue; this must
be embodied in agitation increased tenfold.
We cannot increase food supplies when there is no food;
we cannot increase the number of professional agitators
and intellectuals tenfold when none are available. This
we cannot do. But we can tell the broad masses of the workers that today they are not what they were until yesterday.
If you set out to conduct personal agitation you will win
by sheer weight of numbers.
And we shall have a mobilisation that is not an ordinary
one, but is a real campaign to decide the ultimate fate of
the working class which realises that only the next few
months separate us from the last and decisive battle—not
in the sense that this is meant in song and verse, but in
the literal sense of the word, for we have weighed up our
practical forces in other spheres and not only insofar as
concerns the whiteguards.
During this year we have made a practical estimate of
our forces relative to international imperialism. At one
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291
time the Germans tried to throttle us, but we knew that
they were hampered, that the British and French imperialists were hanging on to them with one hand. At one time
we had the British and French against us. They had both
hands free. Had they attacked us in December 1918, we
could not have held out; we have now stood up to them for
several more trying months and we know that their bourgeois order is decaying. Even their best troops were not
fit for anything but to retreat before units of insurgents
operating in the Ukraine. Our reasoning, therefore, is perfectly clear, and the working class has instinctively realised
that we are on the eve of the last battle, that the next few
months will decide whether we shall achieve final victory,
or whether we shall have to go through fresh difficulties.
I shall read to you those of the other measures that are
outlined here:
“4. All male office workers are to be replaced by women,
for which purpose a new registration, both Party and trade
union, shall be carried out....
“5. Aid Bureaus or Committees of Action, local and central, are to be instituted immediately through the trade
unions, factory committees, Party organisations, cooperative societies, etc. Their addresses shall be published.
The public shall be informed of them in the widest possible
manner. Every man liable to mobilisation, every Red Army
man, and every person desirous of leaving for the South,
for the Don or the Ukraine for food supply work should
know that there is an aid bureau or a committee of action
nearby; that it is accessible to every worker and peasant
and he can obtain advice or instruction there, that contact
with the army authorities will be facilitated for him,
etc.
“It shall be the special task of these bureaus to help to
equip the Red Army. We can greatly increase the strength
of our army if we improve the supply of arms, clothing,
etc. And among the population there are still considerable
quantities of arms which have been hidden or are not being
used for the army. There are still considerable factory
stocks of goods of various kinds needed by the army, and
they must be quickly found and dispatched to the army.
The army organisations in charge of supplies should be
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given immediate, broad and effective assistance by the
general public. Every effort must be devoted to this matter.”
I shall now touch upon the several different periods
of our war tasks. Our first war problem we tackled by guerrilla, irregular insurrections such as the comrades in the
Ukraine are now resorting to. There is not so much a regular
war in the Ukraine as a guerrilla movement and spontaneous
insurrection. It results in very rapid attacks and creates
extreme chaos in the midst of which the job of using stocks
of food is one of incalculable difficulty. There is no old
machinery, not even of the kind that we inherited from the
Smolny period of our rule—and that was bad enough, and
worked against us rather than for us. But why is there no
such machinery in the Ukraine? Because it has not yet
passed out of the phase of partisan warfare and spontaneous
insurrection into the regular army phase, which is always
characteristic of the consolidated power of every class,
including the proletariat. We created our machinery after
several months of untold difficulties.
We set up special food supply organisations. For a time
we made some use of the services of the food supply
experts, keeping them under Party supervision; now,
however, we have everywhere army organisations in charge
of supplies. When a period of extreme exertion of effort
sets in, we say that we shall not revert to the old partisan
methods, we have suffered enough from them; we urge
that members of the working class shall be enlisted into
the existing organised bodies, the regular organisations
for supplying the Red Army. The working class in the mass
can do that. You know that chaos reigns in the matter of
equipment, in the matter of finding this equipment, of
dispatching it, and so forth. Here help is needed in the
work of supplying the Red Army. Our army experts say
that we shall make progress if we mobilise a large number
of soldiers who will speedily and finally decide the issue
on the Eastern Front. But this is being held up mainly
by the shortage of supplies, which is not surprising in view
of the state of ruin we inherited from the imperialist war
and the Civil War. But this means that we must appreciate
and understand the new situation with its new tasks. A year
ago we began to establish regular organisations, but this
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293
is not enough; these regular organisations must receive
the assistance of the mass movement, of the mass energy
of the working class. Here we have an approximate outline
of what the trade unions could do in this matter. The trade
unions alone can do this, because they are closest to
industry, and head the largest section of the workers, a
section numbering millions. This task calls for a change in
the tempo and the character of their activities for the next
few months. In this way we shall be certain of complete
victory within a few months.
“6. The trade unions must organise the extensive enlistment of peasants, especially of peasant youths in the nonagricultural gubernias, for the ranks of the Red Army,
for the formation of food detachments and for the food
army in the Don and the Ukraine.
“This activity can and should be expanded to many times
its present volume; it helps both to assist the hungry
population of the metropolitan cities and the non-agricultural
gubernias and to strengthen the Red Army.”
I have already said that our food supply and war tasks
are closely connected, and you understand perfectly well
that they must be. They must be linked up. One cannot
be carried out without the other.
“7. As regards the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Party line in the present situation is to imprison those who assist Kolchak, whether deliberately or
unwittingly. In our republic of working people we shall
not tolerate anybody who does not help us by deeds in the
fight against Kolchak. Among the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries there are people who are willing to
render such help. These people should be encouraged and
given practical jobs, principally in the way of technical
assistance to the Red Army in the rear, and their work
must be strictly supervised....”
In this respect we must say that lately we have been
through an exceedingly severe and unpleasant experience.
You know that the leading groups of the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries looked at the matter in this
way—“In spite of everything, we want to remain parliamentarians and condemn the Bolsheviks and Kolchak’s
followers alike.” We had to tell them politely that this
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is not the time for parliaments. Our enemies are trying
to get us by the throat, and we are fighting the last and
decisive battle. We shall not joke with them. When they
foment strikes like this, they commit a heinous crime
against the working class. Every strike costs the lives of
thousands and thousands of Red Army men as we can see.
The cessation of arms production in Tula means the death
of thousands of workers and peasants; to deprive us of a
number of factories in Tula means depriving thousands of
workers of their lives. We say that we are fighting, we are
spending our last ounce of strength, we regard this war
as the only just and legitimate war. We have lit the torch
of socialism at home and all over the world. We shall fight
ruthlessly against anyone who hinders this struggle in the
slightest. He who is not for us is against us. But what
if there are people—and we know that there are such among
the Mensheviks—who cannot, or will not, understand what
is taking place in Russia? Who are not yet convinced that
although in Russia the “wicked” Bolsheviks made such a
revolution, in Germany, the birth-pangs of the revolution
are immeasurably more severe? The democratic republic
there—what is it? What is German freedom? It is freedom
to murder the genuine leaders of the proletariat—Karl
Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and scores of others. In
this way the Scheidemann gang is only putting off the hour
of its defeat. Obviously, those people cannot govern. Since
November 9 there have been five months of freedom in the
German Republic, and either the Scheidemann gang or
their accomplices have been in power. But you know there
is more squabbling among them than ever. This example
proves that the only alternative is either the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The fact that there is no middle course is shown, for example,
by what we read today in the Frankfurter Zeitung. 51 It
says that the example of Hungary shows we must go forward to socialism. Hungary has proved that the bourgeoisie
voluntarily surrenders power to the Soviets when they know
that the country is in such a desperate position that nothing can save it, that nothing can lead the people along the
difficult path of salvation but the Soviets. And to those
who, wavering between the old and the new, say that
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although ideologically they do not recognise the dictatorship
of the proletariat they are, nevertheless, prepared to assist
Soviet power and keep their convictions to themselves
because they understand that in the midst of fierce war
we must not argue, but fight—to those people we say: “If
you want to engage in politics, meaning by politics that
you, in front of the weary and tormented masses, will freely
criticise Soviet power, not realising that in this way you
are helping Kolchak—we say there will be ruthless
war against you.” It is not easy to grasp the significance
of and carry out such a policy at one stroke. We cannot
pursue the same policy with regard to all of them. We
tell them that if they want to engage in their politics, we
shall provide a place for them in prison, or in other countries which are willing to receive them. We shall make
these countries a present of several hundred Mensheviks.
Or do you, at last, want to offer to help Soviet power,
because otherwise there will be several more years of
untold disaster, and in the end Soviet power will be
victorious anyway. To people who talk like that we must
give every encouragement; and we must give them practical work to do. This policy cannot be defined so easily
and at one stroke as a policy which proceeds in one, single
direction. But I am sure that every worker who has had
practical experience of what the burden of war means, who
knows what supplying the Red Army means, who knows the
horrors every Red Army man at the front must go through—
every worker will fully appreciate this lesson in politics.
That is why I ask you to adopt these theses, and to concentrate all the efforts of the trade unions on the task of
putting them into operation as speedily and vigorously
as possible.
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2
REPLY TO A QUESTION ON THE TULA STRIKE
I have no definite information about Tula and cannot
speak as authoritatively on this matter as the preceding
comrades did. But I do know the political physiognomy of
the newspaper Vsegda Vperyod! This is nothing more nor
less than incitement to strike. It is aiding and abetting
our enemies, the Mensheviks, who are fomenting strikes.
Somebody asked me if this had been proved. My reply is
that if I were a barrister, a solicitor, or a member of Parliament, I would be obliged to present proof. But I am
not the first, the second, or the third, and so I do not intend
to and there is no reason why I should. Even supposing the
Menshevik Central Committee is better than the Mensheviks in Tula who have been definitely exposed as fomentors
of strikes—in fact I have no doubt some of the regular
members of the Menshevik Committee are better—in a
political struggle, when the whiteguards are trying to get
us by the throat, is it possible to draw distinctions? Have
we time for it? Facts are facts. Let us suppose that they
were not aiding and abetting, but were weak and yielded
to the Right Mensheviks; so what of it? The Right Mensheviks foment strikes, and Martov, or others, condemned
these Rights in the newspapers. What does this teach us?
We get a note saying “I, too, condemn, but”... (A voice:
“What else can they do?”). They can do what the Bolshevik
Party does—take their stand, not in words, but in deeds.
Does not propaganda abroad take advantage of the conduct
of the Mensheviks here? Did not the Berne Conference support
all the imperialists when they said that the Bolsheviks
were usurpers? We say—you have taken this stand at a
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297
time when Kolchak’s gangs are striking a blow that is
causing the death of thousands of Red Army men in a
country which the imperialists of the whole world are trying to crush. In two years’ time, perhaps, after we have
beaten Kolchak, we shall examine this matter, but not
now. Now we must fight in order to defeat the enemy within
the next few months; and you know what this enemy will
do to the workers. You know this from what happened at
Ivashchenkovo. 52 You know what Kolchak is doing.
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3
SPEECH CLOSING THE DISCUSSION
Comrades, one of the speakers, who was called the speaker for the Opposition, demanded in a resolution that we
should turn to our Constitution. When I heard that I wondered whether the speaker was not confusing our Constitution with the Scheidemann Constitution. Scheidemann’s,
like that of all democratic republics, promises all citizens
all sorts of liberties. Bourgeois republics have promised
this to everybody for hundreds and thousands of years.
You know what became of these bourgeois republics, you
know that on a world-wide scale they have all collapsed.
The vast majority of the workers side with the Communists.
The word “Sovietist”, which does not exist in the Russian
language, is heard everywhere in the world. And we can
say that no matter what country we go to, if we say the
word “Sovietist”, everybody will understand us and follow
our lead. Clause 23 of the Constitution says:
“Guided by the interests of the working class as a whole, the
R.S.F.S.R. deprives individual persons and individual groups of
rights used to the detriment of the socialist revolution.”
We did not promise liberties right and left; on the contrary, we, in our Constitution, which has been translated
into all languages—into German, English, Italian and
French—said definitely that we shall deprive socialists
of their liberties if they use them to the detriment of the
socialist revolution, if they are used to cover up liberties
for the capitalists. That is why this reference to the Constitution was wrong even from the formal point of view
We have openly stated that in the transition period, the
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299
period of fierce struggle, we not only refrain from promising liberties right and left, but say in advance that we
shall deprive of their liberties those citizens who hinder
the socialist revolution. Who will judge whether they do so
or not? The proletariat will.
Attempts have been made here to turn the question into
one of parliamentary struggle. I have always said: parliamentarism is an excellent thing, but these are not parliamentary times. Hearing the government declare that the
situation is grave, Comrade Lozovsky says that this is
exactly the time for the people to present scores of demands.
That is what all parliamentarians did in the “good old
days”; but this is not the time for that sort of thing. I know
that we suffer from a host of defects, I know that in Hungary Soviet power will be better than in this country. But
when we are told in a period of mobilisation that this, that
and the other are proposed, and that we should bargain
over it, I say that these old parliamentary methods are
useless; the class-conscious workers have already rejected
them. This is not what we want.
We defined our main line as class struggle against the
kulaks, against the rich elements who are opposed to us.
Success in this being assured, we say that we must now
establish more correct relations with the middle peasants.
This is a very difficult job. In a period of grave danger you
must help Soviet power, such as it is. We shall not change
within the next few months. Here there is not and cannot
be any middle course. Any attempt to create this middle
course by artificial parliamentary methods would be stepping on to slippery ground. When one speaker said that
the peasants are all opposed to us, this was one of those
“little” exaggerations which in practice encourage the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. The vast majority of the people know that by far most of the peasants
are with us. For the first time they have Soviet power. Even
the slogans of the insurrection (in which only an insignificant section of the peasant masses was involved) were
“For Soviet power. For the Bolsheviks. Down with the communia”. We say that the fight against this will be a very
stubborn one, because the intelligentsia are sabotaging us
on the sly. We have been obliged to take a larger number of
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bad elements than good. Since the better elements of the
intelligentsia turned their backs on us, we were obliged
to take those that are not so good.
Comrade Romanov proposed a resolution which he himself formulated after his comrades had been arrested. “We
demand freedom for all. . . ” they declare. (Lenin reads the
resolution.) The workers later resumed work, but this cost
us several thousands of lost days and several thousands
of lives of Red Army men, workers and peasants, on the
Eastern Front.
I ask calmly and categorically which is better, to imprison several scores or hundreds of instigators, guilty or
innocent, deliberate or unwitting, or lose thousands of
Red Army men and workers? The first is better. I don’t
care whether I am accused of committing every mortal sin
imaginable and of violating liberties, I plead guilty, but
the interests of the workers will be furthered. At a time
like this, when the people are exhausted, politically-conscious elements should help them to hold on for the next
few months. It was not we who were victorious in Odessa.
It is ridiculous to think that we were victorious. We captured Odessa because their soldiers refused to go into
battle. I received a telegram from the Northern Front
saying, “Send the British prisoners of war to the front.”
The comrades here say that the British are wailing and
saying they will not go back into the army. What does that
show? Their troops refuse to go into battle. They are ten
times stronger than we are, and yet they refuse to fight.
That is why, when we are told that we promised a lot,
but have done nothing, we say that we have done the main
thing. We promised to start a revolution which will become
a world revolution; it has begun, and it now stands so firmly
on its feet that our international position is splendid. We
fulfilled our main promise and, evidently, the vast majority
of the class-conscious workers realise this. They realise
that now only a few months separate us from victory over
the capitalists all over the world. What are we to do in
these few months if certain elements are exhausted; what
should we do, play with them, incite them or, on the contrary, help the exhausted to hold out for those few months
that will decide the fate of the entire war. You can see
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301
that in the South we shall get the war over in less than a
few months, we shall finish it off completely and release
the army for the East. It is obvious, therefore, that the plans
of the Entente—of the British, French and Americans—
have gone awry. In Odessa, they had ten thousand men and
a fleet—that is what the position was. This is not a matter
of parliamentarism, or of concessions—on this we make no
promises and undertake no obligations. We put the question
this way—when the people are war weary, and are hard
pressed by hunger, what should the class-conscious proletariat, the class-conscious section of the workers do? Permit
people to play on this weariness, for it is becoming a game.
If we say stop the war, the ignorant masses will vote for
it, but the class-conscious section of the masses says that
we can bring the war to a close within the next few months.
The weary must be encouraged, sustained and led. The
comrades themselves see that every class-conscious worker
leads scores of tired people. We say this and we demand it.
This is exactly what the dictatorship of the proletariat
means—one class leads the other, because it is more organised, more solid and more class-conscious. The ignorant
masses fall to every bait, and because of their weariness
are ready to yield to anything. But the class-conscious
section says that we must hold out, because in a few months
we shall be victorious all over the world. This is how the
matter stands. I take the liberty of thinking that the time
has not yet come for parliamentary debates. We must
make another big effort to achieve victory, and this time
final victory, within the next few months.
302
FOREWORD TO HENRI GUILBEAUX’S PAMPHLET
SOCIALISM AND SYNDICALISM IN FRANCE
DURING THE WAR
Comrade Guilbeaux’s pamphlet is very well timed. The
history of the socialist and trade union movements in a
number of countries during the war should be summarised
for all countries. This history shows as clearly as possible
the slow but steady turn to the left, the progress towards
revolutionary thinking and revolutionary action by the
working class. This history discloses, on the one hand, the
deep-going roots of the Third, Communist International,
the preparations made for it, specific within each nation,
depending upon its concrete historical features. A knowledge
of the deep roots of the Third International is essential
for an understanding of the inevitability of the International
and of the difference in the paths leading the various
national socialist parties to it.
On the other hand, the history of the socialist and trade
union movements during the war shows us the beginning
of the collapse of bourgeois democracy and bourgeois parliamentarism, the beginning of a turn from bourgeois
democracy to Soviet, or proletarian, democracy. This
tremendous epochal change is what many, very many socialists simply cannot understand yet, tied as they are by the
chains of routine, philistine worship of what exists and
existed yesterday, philistine blindness which prevents
their seeing what is being brought into existence by the
history of dying capitalism in all countries.
Comrade Guilbeaux undertook the task of writing an
essay on the history of the French socialist and trade union
FORWARD TO HENRI GUILBEAUX’S PAMPHLET
303
movements during the war. The clear and accurate enumeration of the facts gives the reader a vivid illustration of
the beginning of a great turn, of the turning of the tide in
the history of socialism. One may be certain that Guilbeaux’s
pamphlet will not only be most widely circulated among
all class-conscious workers, but that it will also lead to the
publication of a number of similar pamphlets on the wartime history of socialism and the working-class movement
in other countries.
N. Lenin
Moscow, April 13, 1919
Published in French in 1 9 1 9
First published in Russian in 1 9 2 0
Published according to
the Russian version of
the pamphlet
304
SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FIRST MOSCOW
SOVIET COMMANDERS’ COURSES
APRIL 15, 1919
BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT
Lenin recalled the words of a certain German general
who said that if the soldiers knew what they were fighting
for, there would be no war. The situation was different
in our times. The Red Army had a great and definite task
to perform—to emancipate the working class. The workers’
and peasants’ Red Army was growing and gaining strength
day by day. This growth was due to the fact that the workers
and peasants were profoundly conscious of their aims. And
although they had suffered a number of reverses on the
Eastern Front, they still had to halt Kolchak and defeat him.
And they would do it. Krasnov’s gangs had more than once
created a serious situation for Soviet Russia, but in spite
of the help they had been receiving from the whole of the
bourgeois world, these gangs had been routed, and would
soon suffer complete defeat. That had been achieved only
because of the political consciousness of the workers and
peasants. “In accepting this Red Flag from the District
Committee,” continued Lenin, “you must firmly and resolutely carry it forward. Every day brings us news to the
effect that the Red Flag of liberty has been raised, now in
one place, now in another. You have seen the formation
of the Soviet Republic of Hungary, of Soviet Bavaria and
of the Third, Communist International; and soon you will
see the formation of the World Federative Republic of
Soviets.
“Long live the World Federative Republic of Soviets!
“Long live the Red Army!
“Long live our Red Commanders!” (Stormy applause.)
Pravda No. 8 3 ,
April 1 7 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Pravda text
305
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
AND ITS PLACE IN HISTORY
The imperialists of the Entente countries are blockading
Russia in an effort to cut off the Soviet Republic, as a
seat of infection, from the capitalist world. These people,
who boast about their “democratic” institutions, are so
blinded by their hatred of the Soviet Republic that they
do not see how ridiculous they are making themselves. Just
think of it, the advanced, most civilised and “democratic”
countries, armed to the teeth and enjoying undivided
military sway over the whole world, are mortally afraid
of the ideological infection coming from a ruined, starving,
backward, and even, they assert, semi-savage country!
This contradiction alone is opening the eyes of the working masses in all countries and helping to expose the hypocrisy of the imperialists Clemanceau, Lloyd George, Wilson
and their governments.
We are being helped, however, not only by the capitalists’ blind hatred of the Soviets, but also by their bickering
among themselves, which induces them to put spokes in
each other’s wheels. They have entered into a veritable
conspiracy of silence, for they are desperately afraid of
the spread of true information about the Soviet Republic
in general, and of its official documents in particular. Yet,
Le Temps, the principal organ of the French bourgeoisie,
has published a report on the foundation in Moscow of
the Third, Communist International.
For this we express our most respectful thanks to the
principal organ of the French bourgeoisie, to this leader
of French chauvinism and imperialism. We are prepared to
send an illuminated address to Le Temps in token of
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V. I. L E N I N
our appreciation of the effective and able assistance it is
giving us.
The manner in which Le Temps compiled its report on
the basis of our wireless messages clearly and fully reveals
the motive that prompted this organ of the money-bags.
It wanted to have a dig at Wilson, as if to say, “Look at the
people with whom you negotiate!” The wiseacres who write
to the order of the money-bags do not see that their attempt
to frighten Wilson with the Bolshevik bogey is becoming,
in the eyes of the working people, an advertisement for the
Bolsheviks. Once more, our most respectful thanks to the
organ of the French millionaires!
The Third International has been founded in a world
situation that does not allow prohibitions, petty and miserable devices of the Entente imperialists or of capitalist
lackeys like the Scheidemanns in Germany and the Renners
in Austria to prevent news of this International and sympathy for it spreading among the working class of the world.
This situation has been brought about by the growth of
the proletarian revolution, which is manifestly developing
everywhere by leaps and bounds. It has been brought about
by the Soviet movement among the working people, which
has already achieved such strength as to become really
international.
The First International (1864-72) laid the foundation
of an international organisation of the workers for the
preparation of their revolutionary attack on capital. The
Second International (1889-1914) was an international
organisation of the proletarian movement whose growth
proceeded in breadth, at the cost of a temporary drop in
the revolutionary level, a temporary strengthening of
opportunism, which in the end led to the disgraceful collapse of this International.
The Third International actually emerged in 1918, when
the long years of struggle against opportunism and socialchauvinism, especially during the war, led to the formation
of Communist Parties in a number of countries. Officially,
the Third International was founded at its First Congress,
in March 1919, in Moscow. And the most characteristic
feature of this International, its mission of fulfilling, of
implementing the precepts of Marxism, and of achieving
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
307
the age-old ideals of socialism and the working-class
movement—this most characteristic feature of the Third
International has manifested itself immediately in the fact
that the new, third, “International Working Men’s Association” has already begun to develop, to a certain extent,
into a union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The First International laid the foundation of the proletarian, international struggle for socialism.
The Second International marked a period in which the
soil was prepared for the broad, mass spread of the
movement in a number of countries.
The Third International has gathered the fruits of the
work of the Second International, discarded its opportunist, social-chauvinist, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois dross,
and has begun to implement the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The international alliance of the parties which are leading the most revolutionary movement in the world, the
movement of the proletariat for the overthrow of the yoke
of capital, now rests on an unprecedentedly firm base, in
the shape of several Soviet republics, which are implementing
the dictatorship of the proletariat and are the embodiment
of victory over capitalism on an international scale.
The epoch-making significance of the Third, Communist
International lies in its having begun to give effect to
Marx’s cardinal slogan, the slogan which sums up the centuries-old development of socialism and the working-class
movement, the slogan which is expressed in the concept of
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This prevision and this theory—the prevision and theory
of a genius—are becoming a reality.
The Latin words have now been translated into the
languages of all the peoples of contemporary Europe—
more, into all the languages of the world.
A new era in world history has begun.
Mankind is throwing off the last form of slavery: capitalist, or wage, slavery.
By emancipating himself from slavery, man is for the
first time advancing to real freedom.
How is it that one of the most backward countries of
Europe was the first country to establish the dictatorship
FROM MARX
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DISTRIBUTION
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of the proletariat, and to organise a Soviet republic? We
shall hardly be wrong if we say that it is this contradiction
between the backwardness of Russia and the “leap” she has
made over bourgeois democracy to the highest form of
democracy, to Soviet, or proletarian, democracy—it is
this contradiction that has been one of the reasons (apart
from the dead weight of opportunist habits and philistine
prejudices that burdened the majority of the socialist
leaders) why people in the West have had particular difficulty
or have been slow in understanding the role of the
Soviets.
The working people all over the world have instinctively
grasped the significance of the Soviets as an instrument
in the proletarian struggle and as a form of the proletarian
state. But the “leaders”, corrupted by opportunism, still
continue to worship bourgeois democracy, which they call
“democracy” in general.
Is it surprising that the establishment of the dictatorship
of the proletariat has brought out primarily the “contradiction” between the backwardness of Russia and her “leap”
over bourgeois democracy? It would have been surprising
had history granted us the establishment of a new form of
democracy without a number of contradictions.
If any Marxist, or any person, indeed, who has a general
knowledge of modern science, were asked whether it is
likely that the transition of the different capitalist countries to the dictatorship of the proletariat will take place
in an identical or harmoniously proportionate way, his
answer would undoubtedly be in the negative. There never
has been and never could be even, harmonious, or proportionate development in the capitalist world. Each
country has developed more strongly first one, then another
aspect or feature or group of features of capitalism and
of the working-class movement. The process of development
has been uneven.
When France was carrying out her great bourgeois revolution and rousing the whole European continent to a
historically new life, Britain proved to be at the head of
the counter-revolutionary coalition, although at the same
time she was much more developed capitalistically than
France. The British working-class movement of that period,
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309
however, brilliantly anticipated much that was contained
in the future Marxism.
When Britain gave the world Chartism, the first broad,
truly mass and politically organised proletarian revolutionary movement, bourgeois revolutions, most of them
weak, were taking place on the European continent, and
the first great civil war between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie had broken out in France. The bourgeoisie
defeated the various national contingents of the proletariat
one by one, in different ways in different countries.
Britain was the model of a country in which, as Engels
put it, the bourgeoisie had produced, alongside a bourgeois aristocracy, a very bourgeois upper stratum of the
proletariat. 53 For several decades this advanced capitalist
country lagged behind in the revolutionary struggle of
the proletariat. France seemed to have exhausted the strength
of the proletariat in two heroic working-class revolts of
1848 and 1871 against the bourgeoisie that made very
considerable contributions to world-historical development.
Leadership in the International of the working-class movement then passed to Germany; that was in the seventies
of the nineteenth century, when she lagged economically
behind Britain and France. But when Germany had outstripped these two countries economically, i.e., by the
second decade of the twentieth century, the Marxist workers’
party of Germany, that model for the whole world, found
itself headed by a handful of utter scoundrels, the most
filthy blackguards—from Scheidemann and Noske to David
and Legien—loathsome hangmen drawn from the workers’
ranks who had sold themselves to the capitalists, who were
in the service of the monarchy and the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie.
World history is leading unswervingly towards the
dictatorship of the proletariat, but is doing so by paths that
are anything but smooth, simple and straight.
When Karl Kautsky was still a Marxist and not the
renegade from Marxism he became when he began to champion unity with the Scheidemanns and to support bourgeois democracy against Soviet, or proletarian, democracy,
he wrote an article—this was at the turn of the century—
entitled “The Slavs and Revolution”. In this article he
310
V. I. L E N I N
traced the historical conditions that pointed to the possibility of leadership in the world revolutionary movement
passing to the Slavs.
And so it has. Leadership in the revolutionary proletarian International has passed for a time—for a short time,
it goes without saying—to the Russians, just as at various
periods of the nineteenth century it was in the hands of the
British, then of the French, then of the Germans.
I have had occasion more than once to say that it was
easier for the Russians than for the advanced countries
to begin the great proletarian revolution, but that it will
be more difficult for them to continue it and carry it to
final victory, in the sense of the complete organisation
of a socialist society.
It was easier for us to begin, firstly, because the
unusual—for twentieth-century Europe—political backwardness of the tsarist monarchy gave unusual strength to the
revolutionary onslaught of the masses. Secondly, Russia’s
backwardness merged in a peculiar way the proletarian
revolution against the bourgeoisie with the peasant revolution against the landowners. That is what we started
from in October 1917, and we would not have achieved
victory so easily then if we had not. As long ago as 1856,
Marx spoke, in reference to Prussia; of the possibility of a
peculiar combination of proletarian revolution and peasant
war. 54 From the beginning of 1905 the Bolsheviks advocated the idea of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of
the proletariat and the peasantry. Thirdly, the 1905 revolution contributed enormously to the political education
of the worker and peasant masses, because it familiarised
their vanguard with “the last word” of socialism in the
West and also because of the revolutionary action of the
masses. Without such a “dress rehearsal” as we had in 1905,
the revolutions of 1917—both the bourgeois, February
revolution, and the proletarian, October revolution—would
have been impossible. Fourthly, Russia’s geographical
conditions permitted her to hold out longer than other
countries could have done against the superior military
strength of the capitalist, advanced countries. Fifthly,
the specific attitude of the proletariat towards the peasantry
facilitated the transition from the bourgeois revolution to
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311
the socialist revolution, made it easier for the urban proletarians to influence the semi-proletarian, poorer sections
of the rural working people. Sixthly, long schooling in
strike action and the experience of the European mass
working-class movement facilitated the emergence—in a
profound and rapidly intensifying revolutionary situation—
of such a unique form of proletarian revolutionary organisation as the Soviets.
This list, of course, is incomplete; but it will suffice for
the time being.
Soviet, or proletarian, democracy was born in Russia.
Following the Paris Commune a second epoch-making step
was taken. The proletarian and peasant Soviet Republic has
proved to be the first stable socialist republic in the world.
As a new type of state it cannot die. It no longer stands
alone.
For the continuance and completion of the work of building socialism, much, very much is still required. Soviet
republics in more developed countries, where the proletariat has greater weight and influence, have every chance
of surpassing Russia once they take the path of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The bankrupt Second International is now dying and
rotting alive. Actually, it is playing the role of lackey
to the world bourgeoisie. It is a truly yellow International.
Its foremost ideological leaders, such as Kautsky, laud
bourgeois democracy and call it “democracy” in general,
or—what is still more stupid and still more crude—“pure
democracy”.
Bourgeois democracy has outlived its day, just as the
Second International has, though the International performed historically necessary and useful work when the task
of the moment was to train the working-class masses within
the framework of this bourgeois democracy.
No bourgeois republic, however democratic, ever was
or could have been anything but a machine for the suppression of the working people by capital, an instrument
of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the political rule
of capital. The democratic bourgeois republic promised
and proclaimed majority rule, but it could never put this
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V. I. L E N I N
into effect as long as private ownership of the land and
other means of production existed.
“Freedom” in the bourgeois-democratic republic was
actually freedom for the rich. The proletarians and working peasants could and should have utilised it for the purpose of preparing their forces to overthrow capital, to
overcome bourgeois democracy, but in fact the working
masses were, as a general rule, unable to enjoy democracy
under capitalism.
Soviet, or proletarian, democracy has for the first time
in the world created democracy for the masses, for the working people, for the factory workers and small peasants.
Never yet has the world seen political power wielded
by the majority of the population, power actually wielded
by this majority, as it is in the case of Soviet rule.
It suppresses the “freedom” of the exploiters and their
accomplices; it deprives them of “freedom” to exploit,
“freedom” to batten on starvation, “freedom” to fight for
the restoration of the rule of capital, “freedom” to compact
with the foreign bourgeoisie against the workers and
peasants of their own country.
Let the Kautskys champion such freedom. Only a renegade
from Marxism, a renegade from socialism can do so.
In nothing is the bankruptcy of the ideological leaders
of the Second International, people like Hilferding and
Kautsky, so strikingly expressed as in their utter inability
to understand the significance of Soviet, or proletarian,
democracy, its relation to the Paris Commune, its place
in history, its necessity as a form of the dictatorship of
the proletariat.
The newspaper Die Freiheit, organ of the “Independent”
(alias middle-class, philistine, petty-bourgeois) German
Social-Democratic Party, in its issue No. 74 of February 11,
1919, published a manifesto “To the Revolutionary Proletariat of Germany”.
This manifesto is signed by the Party executive and
by all its members in the National Assembly, the German
variety of our Constituent Assembly.
This manifesto accuses the Scheidemanns of wanting to
abolish the Workers’ Councils, and proposes—don’t laugh!—
that the Councils be combined with the Assembly, that the
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313
Councils be granted certain political rights, a certain
place in the Constitution.
To reconcile, to unite the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
and the dictatorship of the proletariat! How simple! What
a brilliantly philistine idea!
The only pity is that it was tried in Russia, under
Kerensky, by the united Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, those petty-bourgeois democrats who imagine
themselves socialists.
Anyone who has read Marx and failed to understand that
in capitalist society, at every acute moment, in every
serious class conflict, the alternative is either the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of the proletariat, has understood nothing of either the economic or
the political doctrines of Marx.
But the brilliantly philistine idea of Hilferding, Kautsky
and Co. of peacefully combining the dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat requires
special examination, if exhaustive treatment is to be given
to the economic and political absurdities with which this
most remarkable and comical manifesto of February 11 is
packed. That will have to be put off for another article. 55
Moscow, April 15, 1919
Published in May 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the manuscript
314
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF THE RAILWAYMEN
OF MOSCOW JUNCTION
APRIL 16, 1919
Comrades, we all know that our country is now passing
through difficult times. We have had to declare a mobilisation to repel the last onslaught of the counter-revolutionaries and of international imperialism. At the present
time we need the effective assistance of the masses of the
working people themselves to carry out this mobilisation
successfully.
Comrades, all of you, of course, know perfectly well
what colossal difficulties the war is causing and what
enormous sacrifices it demands, particularly at the present
time, when the country has to face the food difficulties
and transport chaos as a result of the war. Owing to this,
the sufferings that the masses of the working people have
to bear as a consequence of this war have now become more
acute than ever.
But we have every reason to think and assert that our
position has improved, and that we shall surmount all our
difficulties. We are not, however, harbouring any illusions.
We know that at the present time our enemies, the capitalists of Britain, France and America, who are obviously
working jointly with the Russian capitalists, are making
a last effort to overthrow Soviet power. We see that the
representatives of the landowners and the capitalists have
been conferring in Paris for a long time now. We see that
day after day and hour after hour they have greater hopes
that Soviet power will collapse. But we also see that to
this day, five months after their victory over Germany,
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF RAILWAYMEN
315
they have failed to conclude peace. Why? Because they are
quarrelling among themselves over the division of the
dainty morsels—who is to get Turkey, who is to get Bulgaria, how is Germany to be plundered, which titbits Britain, France and America are to have, how many billions
to take in the form of indemnities from the Germans? It is
obvious that they will get nothing from Germany, because
that country has been ruined by the war, and the masses
of the working people there are more and more vigorously
resisting the oppression of the bourgeois government.
Comrades, because of all this we may be sure that at
the present time, in view of Kolchak’s victory on the Eastern Front, there has been a fresh burst of hope on the part
of the Russian and foreign capitalists. But even though
Kolchak may succeed in winning partial victories, they
will never realise their hopes in respect of the Soviet Russian Republic.
We know that after their victory over Germany, the Allies were left with capital, an army millions strong, and a
navy that knows no rival. Immediately after the defeat
of Germany they had every opportunity of utilising all
these forces for the purpose of conquering the Soviet Russian Republic. All that the Allied imperialists did in South
Russia, their landing on the Black Sea coast and their
occupation of Odessa, was directed against Soviet power.
But what do we see today, five months later? Did they
not have military forces, a million-strong army, and a navy?
Why did they have to retreat before the badly armed army
of Ukrainian workers and peasants?
Because there is disaffection among their troops; this
is proved by the information we have received, and which
has been corroborated. A war for the division of capitalists’
profits cannot be waged for four years with impunity. And
now they have defeated Wilhelm, upon whom they put all
the blame, they are unable to continue the war. We know
that in the military sense the Entente countries were, and
strictly speaking, still are, immeasurably stronger than we
are. Nevertheless, we say that they have lost the war against
us. This is not merely our imagination, or enthusiasm on
our part, it has been proved by the events in the Ukraine.
They cannot fight after all countries have been exhausted
316
V. I. L E N I N
by war, worn out by it, when it is becoming obvious to
everybody that the war is being continued only for the
purpose of preserving the power of capital over the working
people. The Allies are still postponing the inevitable conclusion of peace with Russia, for the sake of which we have
taken a number of steps, and have even offered terms that
will be most burdensome for us. But we know that heavy
financial burdens are immeasurably easier to bear than the
continuation of the war, which deprives us of the younger
generation of the workers and peasants. The imperialist
governments know they cannot wage war against us. They
know what the advance of Kolchak, who has mobilised
several tens of thousands of young Siberian peasants, is
really worth. He dared not recruit men who have seen
active service, for he knew that they would not follow him,
and he is able to keep control over these peasant lads only
by brutal discipline and deception.
That is why we say with absolute conviction, although
our position has become more acute, that we are in a position to bring this war to a close within the next few months
and the Allies will be compelled to conclude peace with us.
They are relying on Kolchak, they are counting on the food
difficulties causing the collapse of Soviet power; nothing
of the kind, we say. Of course, our food situation is by no
means an easy one, and we know that still greater difficulties
lie ahead. Nevertheless, we say that our position is nowhere
near as bad as it was last year. At that time, last spring, the
food shortage and the transport chaos were a greater threat
than now.
In the first half of 1918 our food supply organisations
were able to procure only twenty-eight million poods of
grain, but in the second half of that year they obtained
sixty-seven million poods. The first half of the year is
always more difficult and the food shortage more severe.
Last year, when the whole of the Ukraine was under the
heel of the Germans, when Krasnov in the Don region received scores of carloads of military supplies from the
Germans, and when the Czechoslovaks had captured the
Volga area, the food situation was incomparably worse.
Now, the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic has been
joined by others. The Latvian Republic has recently con-
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF RAILWAYMEN
317
solidated its position. There is disaffection among the
German troops who advanced so rapidly, and the German
soldiers say that they will not fight to restore the power
of the barons. And the Ukraine, which Petlyura’s gang
captured for a short period, has now been entirely cleared
of them and our Red troops are marching on to Bessarabia.
We know that the international position of the Soviet
Republic is becoming more stable every day, we may say,
every hour. You all know that Soviet power has been established in Hungary, too, that a Soviet Republic has been
set up there, and when it became evident that the Allies
intended to plunder the country the bourgeoisie resigned
and its place was taken by the workers.
Now, with the conquest of the Ukraine and the consolidation of Soviet power in the Don region, we are gaining
strength. We can now say that we have sources of grain and
food, and an opportunity of obtaining fuel from the Donets
Basin. We are convinced, that, although the most difficult
months are approaching, although the food crisis is more
acute and our transport system is worn out and ruined, we
shall nevertheless get over this crisis. In the Ukraine there
are huge stocks of grain, surpluses that are difficult to take
all at once; partisan warfare is still raging there, and the
peasants, intimidated by the brutal rule of the Germans,
are afraid to seize the landed estates. The first organisational
steps in the Ukraine are difficult, just as they were here in
the period when the Soviet government had its headquarters
at Smolny.
We must send no less than three thousand railwaymen
and a number of peasants from starving North Russia to
the Ukraine. The Ukrainian Government has already issued
a decree fixing the exact amount of grain that we may take
at once at a hundred million poods.
According to our information, in one of the districts
of the Donets Basin there are also a million poods of grain
at a distance of not more than ten versts from the railway.
Last year we had no such stocks, no such resources, but
we have them now. This shows that if we exert all our
efforts for a short time we shall be able to bring the war
to a close within the next few months. We have decisive
preponderance in the South. The Allies—the French and
318
V. I. L E N I N
British—have lost their campaign and have discovered
that with the insignificant number of troops at their command they cannot wage war against the Soviet Republic.
The lies that they spread about us are being dispelled;
nobody now believes the fairy-tale that the Bolsheviks
overthrew the former government by force and are maintaining power by force. Everybody knows that the Soviet
Republic is gaining strength every day.
We are mobilising you now because the outcome of the
war depends on this mobilisation. We have every reason
for stating that it will decide this issue in our favour, and
the imperialists will be compelled to accept our offer of
peace because their strength is waning day by day.
Comrades, this is why the Soviet government has decided
to strain every nerve, to mobilise mainly the workers and
the peasants of the non-agricultural gubernias. We think
that this mobilisation, assuming we make a rapid advance
at the front, will enable us also to improve the food situation, for it will reduce the number of consumers in the
non-agricultural gubernias, where the famine is more acute.
The tens of thousands of men who will be sent to the front—
and we are fighting in the most fertile and well-fed districts
of the country—will be able to obtain food for themselves,
and if we develop the parcel post system, they will be able
immediately to assist their families at home to a no less
and perhaps even to a larger extent than under the poodand-a-half system.
The possibility of bringing the war to a speedy close
depends on this mobilisation- and on this mobilisation we
base our hopes that Kolchak’s advance will be checked and
his forces routed. We do not want to weaken our forces in
the South where they are winding up their victory over the
remnants of Krasnov’s gangs because we want to make sure
of our hold over this most fertile district. We have captured
almost the whole of the Don region- in the North Caucasus
there are even larger stocks of grain which we are sure
of getting hold of if we do not weaken the Southern Front.
Comrades, for the first time in the history of the world
we are waging a war in which the workers and peasants,
knowing, feeling and seeing that the burden of war is immense, suffering the pangs of starvation in a country which
SPEECH AT A MEETING OF RAILWAYMEN
319
is surrounded by the imperialists like a besieged fortress,
understand that they are fighting for the land and factories.
A nation in which the majority of the workers and peasants
realise, feel and see that they are fighting for their own
Soviet power, for the rule of the working people, for the
cause whose victory will ensure them and their children all
the benefits of culture, of all that has been created by human
labour—such a nation can never be vanquished. And we
are convinced, comrades, that this mobilisation will be
carried through much better than previous mobilisations,
that you will support it, that in addition to speakers at
meetings, every one of you, and every one of your friends,
will become a propagandist and go to his fellow-workers in
the factories and on the railways and explain to them in
plain language why it is necessary now to exert all efforts
so as to crush the enemy within the next few months. The
masses themselves will rise, they will all become agitators
to a man, and create an invincible force that will ensure
the existence of the Soviet Republic not only in Russia,
but all over the world.
Pravda No. 8 5 ,
April 2 3 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Pravda text
320
THE FIGHT AGAINST KOLCHAK
SPEECH AT A CONFERENCE OF MOSCOW FACTORY
COMMITTEES AND TRADE UNIONS
APRIL 17, 1919
NEWSPAPER REPORT
Lenin, in a vigorous speech, called upon the Moscow
proletariat to take a direct part in the fight against Kolchak. Kolchak’s latest offensive, he said, was undoubtedly
instigated by the imperialist powers of the Entente. The
fact that the Entente was directing all the movements of
the whiteguards in the border regions was proved by the
telegram received from Comrade Stu0ka the day before
to the effect that the Germans in Courland had stopped
their offensive, but the Soviet Government in Latvia could
not conclude peace with them because France, Britain and
America were demanding that the Germans remain in
Courland and continue the war. The German generals were
willing to obey the victors, but the German soldiers emphatically refused to fight. The Allies’ last card had been
beaten. The victories in the South had shown that the
Allies lack the forces with which to wage war against the
Soviet Republic, or rather, they had lost control over their
forces. The Allies’ gamble in the South had ended in a
shameful act of plunder when they fled from Odessa. The
“enlightened” Allies accused the Soviets of committing acts
of robbery and violence, but themselves robbed the Soviets
of their merchant fleet which they took from Odessa without
any right or justification, thereby dooming the civil population to starvation. This was an act of revenge for the
THE FIGHT AGAINST KOLCHAK
321
collapse of their imperialist plans. The Republic had wound
up the Southern and Crimean fronts and was on the verge
of winding up the Don Front. According to the latest information received, the Red Army was forty versts from
Novocherkassk and victory was assured.
Kolchak’s offensive had been instigated by the Allies
in order to divert Soviet forces from the Southern Front
and give the remnants of the whiteguard forces and Petlyura’s gangs in the South an opportunity to recuperate, but
the plan would fail. The Soviets would not withdraw a
single regiment, or a single company, from the Southern
Front.
A new army would be organised for the Eastern Front,
and for this purpose mobilisation had been ordered. This
mobilisation would be the last. It would enable the Soviets
to put an end to Kolchak, i.e., to put an end to the war,
and this time for good.
The mobilisation had been ordered solely for the nonagricultural, industrial gubernias. In drawing up the plan
for this mobilisation attention had been paid not only to
the interests of the war, but also to the interests of agriculture and food supplies. People were being transferred
from the starving gubernias to the grain-producing regions.
To a large extent this mobilisation would relieve the food
situation in the metropolitan cities and the northern
gubernias. All mobilised men would be allowed to send their
families at home two food parcels a month, and in this
way the working population would be able to obtain bread
from their relatives at the front. According to the report
of the Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs, food parcels
played an important part in supplying food for the towns;
in one day 37 carloads of food parcels had arrived. This
measure would undoubtedly be more effective and more
palpable than the pood-and-a-half experiment made last
year.
The mobilisation had been properly conceived and planned,
but to be successful it would have to be carried out in
an unbureaucratic way. It had to be borne in mind that the
mobilisation would be of decisive importance, and every
effort had to be made to carry it out. Every class-conscious
working man and every class-conscious working woman
322
V. I. L E N I N
would have to take a direct part in it. Conferences and mass
meetings were not enough. What was needed was individual
agitation. Every man liable to mobilisation should be
personally visited. Every one of them should be convinced
individually that the ending of the war depended on his
courage, his determination and his devotion.
The proletarian revolution was spreading to all countries
of the world, continued Lenin. The fact that the Allies had
practically abandoned open military intervention in Russia’s affairs was due to their inability to control their own
armies, which had instinctively felt the effects of the Russian revolution. They were afraid of their own soldiers and
workers, whom they were trying to shield from the influence
of the Russian revolution. Lately, even newspaper reports
of the successes of Bolshevism had been prohibited in the
Allied countries. In Italy, a barrier had been set up to
keep out even private letters from Russia. Lenin said that
the other day he had received a letter from the well-known
Italian socialist, Morgari, who had been very moderate at
the Zimmerwald Conference. This letter had been sent
through secret channels and was written on tiny scraps of
paper, like Party correspondence in tsarist times.
In this secret letter, Morgari wrote: “On behalf of the
Italian Party I send most hearty greetings to the Russian
comrades and to the Soviet government.” (Stormy applause.)
Everybody knew that the bourgeois government had
voluntarily resigned in Hungary, voluntarily released Béla
Kun from prison; he was a Hungarian army officer, a Communist, who had been a prisoner of war in Russia, had
fought actively in the ranks of the Russian Communists,
and had taken part in the suppression of the Left SocialistRevolutionary insurrection in July last year. This formerly
persecuted, slandered and tormented Hungarian Bolshevik had become practically the leader of the Hungarian
Soviet Government. Compared with Russia, Hungary was
a small country; but the Hungarian revolution would,
perhaps, play a more important role in history than the
Russian revolution. The people in that cultured country
were taking into account the entire experience of the Russian revolution. They were firmly applying the principle
of socialisation, and owing to the ground having been
THE FIGHT AGAINST KOLCHAK
323
better prepared there, the edifice of socialism was being
built more systematically and successfully.
And at that very moment when it could be said with
certainty that the cause of international imperialism was
lost for ever, danger was looming in the East in the shape
of Kolchak’s brutal and desperate whiteguard hordes. This
had got to be stopped. By putting an end to Kolchak they
would put an end to the war for good. All efforts must be
exerted. Every class-conscious proletarian would have to
take part in the mobilisation. Every class-conscious working man and working woman would have to devote every
spare moment to the work of individual agitation. They
would not have to submit to this strain for long; a few
months, or a few weeks, perhaps; but it would be the last
and final effort, for victory was certain.
Izvestia No. 8 4 ,
April 1 8 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Izvestia text
324
SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS
OF COMMUNIST STUDENTS
APRIL 17, 1919 56
It gives me great pleasure to greet you. I do not know
how many gubernias are represented here, or where you
have come from. The important thing is that the youth,
the communist youth, are organising. The important thing
is that the youth are gathering together to learn to build
the new type of school. Now you have a new type of school.
The old, bureaucratic school, which you hated and detested,
and with which you had no ties, no longer exists. We have
planned our work for a very long period. The future society
we are striving for, the society in which all must work,
the society in which there will be no class distinctions,
will take a long time to build. At present we are only laying
the foundations of this future society, but you will have
to build it when you grow up. At present, work as your
strength permits; do not undertake tasks that are too much
for you; be guided by your seniors. Once again I greet this
Congress and wish your labours every success.
First published in 1 9 2 3
325
MESSAGE OF GREETINGS
TO THE BAVARIAN SOVIET REPUBLIC
We thank you for your message of greetings, and on our
part whole-heartedly greet the Soviet Republic of Bavaria.
We ask you insistently to give us more frequent, definite
information on the following. What measures have you
taken to fight the bourgeois executioners, the Scheidemanns
and Co.; have councils of workers and servants been formed
in the different sections of the city; have the workers been
armed; have the bourgeoisie been disarmed; has use been
made of the stocks of clothing and other items for immediate
and extensive aid to the workers, and especially to the farm
labourers and small peasants; have the capitalist factories
and wealth in Munich and the capitalist farms in its environs
been confiscated; have mortgage and rent payments by
small peasants been cancelled; have the wages of farm
labourers and unskilled workers been doubled or trebled;
have all paper stocks and all printing-presses been confiscated so as to enable popular leaflets and newspapers to
be printed for the masses; has the six-hour working day
with two- or three-hour instruction in state administration
been introduced; have the bourgeoisie in Munich been made
to give up surplus housing so that workers may be immediately moved into comfortable flats; have you taken
over all the banks; have you taken hostages from the ranks
of the bourgeoisie; have you introduced higher rations for
the workers than for the bourgeoisie; have all the workers
been mobilised for defence and for ideological propaganda
in the neighbouring villages? The most urgent and most
extensive implementation of these and similar measures,
326
V. I. L E N I N
coupled with the initiative of workers’, farm labourers’
and—acting apart from them—small peasants’ councils,
should strengthen your position. An emergency tax must
be levied on the bourgeoisie, and an actual improvement
effected in the condition of the workers, farm labourers
and small peasants at once and at all costs.
With sincere greetings and wishes of success.
Lenin
Written April 2 7 , 1 9 1 9
First published in
Pravda No. 1 1 1 , April 2 2 , 1 9 3 0
Published according to
the manuscript
327
TELEGRAM
TO THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL
OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS OF THE UKRAINE
The resolution passed by the Ekaterinoslav SocialistRevolutionaries shows that those scoundrels are advocates
of the kulaks. There must be a newspaper campaign against
them on the grounds of their defence of the kulaks and their
slogan “oppose centralisation”; it must be required of
them that they expose the kulaks and struggle against the
free sale of grain by peasants. In the government they must
be tied down by precise directives and kept under strict
surveillance and in the event of there being the slightest
deviation from the government’s policy on food, cooperatives and finances and on the question of the closest
collaboration with Russia, preparations must be made to
expel them in disgrace. Keep me more frequently informed.
Lenin
Written late in April 1 9 1 9
First published in the Fourth
(Russian) Edition of the
Collected Works
Published according to
the manuscript
328
THREE SPEECHES DELIVERED IN RED SQUARE
MAY 1, 1919
NEWSPAPER REPORTS
1
Lenin’s appearance among the demonstrators was greeted
with a lengthy ovation. After greeting the Moscow and world
proletariat, Lenin compared the May Day celebrations of
the previous year with the present celebrations. In the
course of the year, he said, the political situation had
changed considerably in favour of Soviet power. On May
the First the year before they had been threatened by German
imperialism, it had been routed and dispersed.
The conditions under which the proletarian festival was
being celebrated had changed in other countries as well.
The workers in all countries were taking the path of struggle
against imperialism. The emancipated working class was
triumphantly celebrating its festival freely and openly
not only in Soviet Russia, but also in Soviet Hungary, and
in Soviet Bavaria.
“And we can say with certainty,” continued Lenin, “that
not only in Red Moscow, in Red Petrograd and in Budapest,
but in all large proletarian centres, the workers, who have
come out into the streets today not merely to take the air
but to demonstrate their strength, are talking about the
significance of Soviet power and of the early triumph of
the proletariat.”
Going on to deal with the threats of Anglo-French imperialism, Lenin said that considering that Anglo-French
imperialists had been compelled to retire from the battlefield in the Ukraine, where small units of insurgents were
THREE SPEECHES IN RED SQUARE. MAY 1, 1919
329
operating, they would certainly be unable to resist the
united forces of Soviet Russia, Hungary and Bavaria.
Their withdrawal from Odessa and the Crimea had shown
that the British and French soldiers did not wish to fight
against Soviet Russia, and this was the pledge of Soviet
victory.
Lenin then read a telegram he had received from
Comrade Kamenev to the effect that Sevastopol had been
entirely cleared of French forces.
“Thus, today,” he said, “the Red Flag of the proletariat,
which is celebrating its day of liberation from the imperialist gangs, is flying over liberated Sevastopol.” (Lengthy
ovation. Shouts of “Hurrah” repeated for a long time.)
Dealing with the Kolchak danger, Lenin said that the
latest reports from the front gave them grounds to believe
that victory over Kolchak was quite near. Tens and hundreds of thousands of men were being sent to the front, and
these would completely destroy Kolchak’s gangs.
In conclusion, Lenin expressed his confidence in the
final victory of Soviet power all over the world and exclaimed: “Long live the world Soviet republic! Long live
communism!”
Izvestia No. 9 3 ,
May 3 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Izvestia text
330
V. I. L E N I N
2
“The majority of those here present are no older than 30
to 35 years of age,” said Lenin, “and they will live to see
the full bloom of communism, from which we are still
remote.”
Pointing to the children, Lenin said that they, who were
taking part in the celebration of the festival of the emancipation of labour, would fully enjoy the fruits of the
labours and sacrifices of the revolutionaries.
“Our grandchildren will examine the documents and other
relics of the epoch of the capitalist system with amazement.
It will be difficult for them to picture to themselves how
the trade in articles of primary necessity could remain in
private hands, how factories could belong to individuals,
how some men could exploit others, how it was possible for
those who did not work to exist. Up to now the story of
what our children would see in the future has sounded
like a fairy-tale; but today, comrades, you clearly see that
the edifice of socialist society, of which we have laid the
foundations, is not a utopia. Our children will build this
edifice with even greater zeal.” (Stormy applause.)
Published in Vecherniye Izvestia
Moskovskogo Sovieta No. 2 3 0 ,
May 2 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the newspaper text
THREE SPEECHES IN RED SQUARE. MAY 1, 1919
331
3
SPEECH AT THE UNVEILING OF A MONUMENT
TO STEPAN RAZIN ON LOBNOYE MESTO *
(Stormy applause.) Comrades, we are today celebrating
May Day in company with proletarians throughout the
world who thirst for the overthrow of capital. This Lobnoye
Mesto is a reminder of how many centuries of torment were
suffered by the working people under the yoke of the oppressors, for the power of capital never could be maintained
except by the force and oppression that even in past times
aroused indignation. This monument is erected to one who
represented the rebellious peasants. On this spot he laid
down his life in the struggle for freedom. Russian revolutionaries have made many sacrifices in the struggle against
capital. The best of the proletarians and the peasants, the
freedom fighters, perished, but it was not in the fight for
the sort of freedom capital offers, freedom in which the
banks, private factories and profiteering are retained. Down
with such freedom! What we need is real freedom and that
is possible only when society consists entirely of working
people. To achieve such freedom much labour and many
sacrifices will be required. We shall do everything possible
to achieve that great aim, to build socialism. (Stormy
applause.)
Published in Vecherniye Izvestia
Moskovskogo Sovieta No. 2 3 0 ,
May 2 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the newspaper text
* Lobnoye Mesto is a round stone dais in Red Square. Royal edicts
and death sentences were announced from it in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. In 1671, Stepan Razin, leader of the peasant
revolt of 1667-71, was executed there.—Ed.
F I R S T A L L -R U S S I A C O N G R E S S
ON ADULT EDUCATION
MAY 6 -19, 1919
Published in the pamphlet:
N. Lenin, Two Speeches at
the First All -Russia Congress
on Adult Education,
Moscow, 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the pamphlet
SSERGNOC AISSUR-LLA TSRIF
NOITACUDE TLUDA NO
9191 ,91- 6 YAM
ot gnidrocca dehsilbuP
telhpmap eht
:telhpmap eht ni dehsilbuP
ta sehceepS owT ,nineL .N
s s e r g n o C a i s s u R- l l A t s r i F e h t
,noitacudE tludA no
9 1 9 1 ,wocsoM
335
1
SPEECH OF GREETING
MAY 6
Comrades, it gives me pleasure to greet the Congress
on adult education. You do not, of course, expect me to
deliver a speech that goes deeply into this subject, like
that delivered by the preceding speaker, Comrade Lunacharsky, who is well-informed on the matter and has made a
special study of it. Permit me to confine myself to a few
words of greeting and to the observations I have made and
thoughts that have occurred to me in the Council of People’s
Commissars when dealing more or less closely with your
work. I am sure that there is not another sphere of Soviet
activity in which such enormous progress has been made
during the past eighteen months as in the sphere of adult
education. Undoubtedly, it has been easier for us and for
you to work in this sphere than in others. Here we had to
cast aside the old obstacles and the old hindrances. Here
it was much easier to do something to meet the tremendous
demand for knowledge, for free education and free development, which was felt most among the masses of the
workers and peasants; for while the mighty pressure of the
masses made it easy for us to remove the external obstacles
that stood in their path, to break up the historical bourgeois
institutions which bound us to imperialist war and doomed
Russia to bear the enormous burden that resulted from this
war, we nevertheless felt acutely how heavy the task of
re-educating the masses was, the task of organisation and
instruction, spreading knowledge, combating that heritage
of ignorance, primitiveness, barbarism and savagery that
we took over. In this field the struggle had to be waged by
336
V. I. L E N I N
entirely different methods; we could count only on the
prolonged success and the persistent and systematic influence of the leading sections of the population, an influence
which the masses willingly submit to, but often we are
guilty of doing less than we could do. I think that in taking
these first steps to spread adult education, education, free
from the old limits and conventionalities, which the adult
population welcomes so much, we had at first to contend
with two obstacles. Both these obstacles we inherited from
the old capitalist society, which is clinging to us to this
day, is dragging us down by thousands and millions of
threads, ropes and chains.
The first was the plethora of bourgeois intellectuals,
who very often regarded the new type of workers’ and peasants’ educational institution as the most convenient field
for testing their individual theories in philosophy and
culture, and in which, very often, the most absurd ideas
were hailed as something new, and the supernatural and
incongruous were offered as purely proletarian art and
proletarian culture. 57 (Applause.) This was natural and,
perhaps, pardonable in the early days, and the broad
movement cannot be blamed for it. I hope that, in the long
run, we shall try to get rid of all this and shall succeed.
The second was also inherited from capitalism. The
broad masses of the petty-bourgeois working people who
were thirsting for knowledge, broke down the old system,
but could not propose anything of an organising or organised
nature. I had opportunities to observe this in the Council
of People’s Commissars when the mobilisation of literate
persons and the Library Department were discussed, and
from these brief observations I realised the seriousness of
the situation in this field. True, it is not quite customary
to refer to something bad in a speech of greeting. I hope
that you are free from these conventionalities, and will
not be offended with me for telling you of my somewhat sad
observations. When we raised the question of mobilising
literate persons, the most striking thing was the brilliant
victory achieved by our revolution without immediately
emerging from the limits of the bourgeois revolution. It
gave freedom for development to the available forces, but
these available forces were petty bourgeois and their watch-
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
337
word was the old one—each for himself and God for all—
the very same accursed capitalist slogan which can never
lead to anything but Kolchak and bourgeois restoration.
If we review what we are doing to educate the illiterate, I
think we shall have to draw the conclusion that we have
done very little, and that our duty in this field is to realise
that the organisation of proletarian elements is essential.
It is not the ridiculous phrases which remain on paper that
matter, but the introduction of measures which the people
need urgently and which would compel every literate
person to regard it his duty to instruct several illiterate
persons. This is what our decree says 58 ; but in this field
hardly anything has been done.
When another question was dealt with in the Council of
People’s Commissars, that of the libraries, I said that the
complaints we are constantly hearing about our industrial
backwardness being to blame, about our having few books
and being unable to produce enough—these complaints,
I told myself, are justified. We have no fuel, of course, our
factories are idle, we have little paper and we cannot produce books. All this is true, but it is also true that we cannot
get at the books that are available. Here we continue to
suffer from peasant simplicity and peasant helplessness;
when the peasant ransacks the squire’s library he runs
home in the fear that somebody will take the books away
from him, because he cannot conceive of just distribution,
of state property that is not something hateful, but is the
common property of the workers and of the working people
generally. The ignorant masses of peasants are not to blame
for this, and as far as the development of the revolution is
concerned it is quite legitimate, it is an inevitable stage,
and when the peasant took the library and kept it hidden,
he could not do otherwise, for he did not know that all
the libraries in Russia could be amalgamated and that
there would be enough books to satisfy those who can read
and to teach those who cannot. At present we must combat
the survivals of disorganisation, chaos, and ridiculous
departmental wrangling. This must be our main task. We
must take up the simple and urgent matter of mobilising
the literate to combat illiteracy. We must utilise the books
that are available and set to work to organise a network of
338
V. I. L E N I N
libraries which will help the people to gain access to every
available book; there must be no parallel organisations,
but a single, uniform planned organisation. This small
matter reflects one of the fundamental tasks of our revolution. If it fails to carry out this task, if it fails to set about
creating a really systematic and uniform organisation in
place of our Russian chaos and inefficiency, then this
revolution will remain a bourgeois revolution because the
major specific feature of the proletarian revolution which
is marching towards communism is this organisation—
for all the bourgeoisie wanted was to break up the old system
and allow freedom for the development of peasant farming,
which revived the same capitalism as in all earlier revolutions.
Since we call ourselves the Communist Party, we must
understand that only now that we have removed the external obstacles and have broken down the old institutions
have we come face to face with the primary task of a genuine proletarian revolution in all its magnitude, namely,
that of organising tens and hundreds of millions of people.
After the eighteen months’ experience that we all have
acquired in this field, we must at last take the right road
that will lead to victory over the lack of culture, and over
the ignorance and barbarism from which we have suffered
all this time. (Stormy applause.)
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
339
2
DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS
OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY
MAY 19
Comrades, instead of an appraisal of the current situation,
which I think some of you expect today, permit me
to answer the most important political questions—not
only theoretical, of course, but also practical—which now
loom before us, characterise the entire stage of the Soviet
revolution and give rise to most controversy; they give rise
to most of attacks by people who think they are socialists,
and they cause most confusion in the minds of people who
think they are democrats and who are particularly fond
of accusing us of violating democracy. It seems to me that
these general political questions are too often, even constantly, to be found in all present-day propaganda and agitation, and in all anti-Bolshevik literature—when, of
course, this literature rises slightly above the level of the
downright lying, slander and vituperation of all organs of
the bourgeois press. If we take the literature of a slightly
higher level I think we shall find that the fundamental
questions are the relations between democracy and dictatorship, the tasks of the revolutionary class in a revolutionary period, the tasks of the transition to socialism in
general, and the relations between the working class and
the peasantry; I think that these questions serve as the main
basis for all present-day political controversies, and although it may sometimes seem to you that it is something
of a digression from the immediate topics of the day, the
explanation of these issues should be our chief duty. I can
340
V. I. L E N I N
not, of course, undertake to cover all these questions in a
short lecture. I have chosen some, which I should like to
talk to you about.
I
The first point I have chosen is that of the difficulties
of every revolution, of every transition to a new system.
If you examine the attacks that are made against the Bolsheviks by people who think that they are socialists and
democrats—and as examples of such I can quote the groups
of writers in Vsegda Vperyod! and Dyelo Naroda, newspapers which in my opinion have quite rightly been suppressed in the interests of the revolution, and the representatives of which most often resort to theoretical criticism in
attacks of the type natural for organs which our authorities
regard as counter-revolutionary—if you examine the attacks
on Bolshevism made by this camp, you will find that a
constant accusation is the following: “The Bolsheviks
promised you, the working people, bread, peace and freedom; but they have not given you bread, or peace, or freedom, they have deceived you, and they have deceived you
by abandoning democracy.” I shall deal with the departure
from democracy separately. At present I will take the other
side of this accusation—”The Bolsheviks promised bread,
peace and freedom, but the Bolsheviks gave you a continuation of the war, an exceptionally fierce and stubborn
struggle, a war of all the imperialists, of the capitalists of
all the Entente countries—which means of the most civilised and advanced countries—against tormented, tortured,
backward and weary Russia.” And these accusations, I repeat, you will find in both the newspapers I have mentioned;
you will hear them made in conversation with every bourgeois intellectual who, of course, thinks that he is not
bourgeois; you will constantly hear them in conversation
with every philistine. And so I ask you to give some thought
to this sort of accusation.
Yes, the Bolsheviks did set out to make a revolution
against the bourgeoisie, to overthrow the bourgeois
government violently, to break away from all the traditional
customs, promises and commandments of bourgeois democracy; they did set out to wage a most desperate and violent
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
341
struggle and war to crush the propertied classes; they did
this to extricate Russia, and then the whole of mankind,
from the imperialist slaughter and to put an end to all war.
Yes, the Bolsheviks did set out to make a revolution in
order to achieve all this, and, of course, they have never
thought of abandoning this fundamental and main object.
Nor is there any doubt that the attempts to emerge from
this imperialist slaughter, to smash the rule of the bourgeoisie, prompted all the civilised countries to attack
Russia; for such is the political programme of France,
Britain and America, no matter how much they insist
that they have abandoned the idea of intervention. No
matter how much the Lloyd Georges, Wilsons and Clemenceaus may assure us that they have abandoned the idea
of intervention, we know that they are lying. We know
that the Allied warships which left, and were compelled
to leave, Odessa and Sevastopol, are now blockading the
Black Sea coast, and are even giving artillery cover to that
part of the Crimean Peninsula, near Kerch, where the volunteers 59 are concentrated. They say: “We cannot surrender
this to you. Even if the volunteers fail to cope with you, we
cannot surrender this part of the Crimean Peninsula,
because, if we did, you would be masters of the Azov Sea,
you will cut us off from Denikin and prevent us from sending supplies to our friends.” Or take the offensive now
developing against Petrograd. Yesterday one of our
destroyers fought against four enemy destroyers. Is it not
clear that this is intervention? Is not the British navy
taking part in it? Is not the same thing happening in
Archangel and Siberia? The fact is that the whole civilised
world is now fighting against Russia.
The question is, did we contradict ourselves when we
called upon the working people to make a revolution,
promising them peace, and brought things to the pitch that
the whole civilised world is now attacking weak, weary,
backward and ruined Russia? Or are those who have the
presumption to hurl such a reproach at us acting in contradiction to the elementary concepts of democracy and
socialism? That is the question. To present this question
in its theoretical, general form, I shall draw an analogy.
We talk about the revolutionary class, the revolutionary
342
V. I. L E N I N
policy of the people, but I suggest you take an individual
revolutionary. Take, for example, Chernyshevsky, and
appraise his activities. What would be the appraisal of
an absolutely ignorant man? Probably he would say: “Well,
the man wrecked his own life, found himself in Siberia,
and achieved nothing.” This is a sample. If we were to hear
an argument like this from some unknown person we would
say: “At best it comes from a man who is hopelessly ignorant and who is, perhaps, not to blame for being so ignorant
that he cannot understand the importance of the activities
of an individual revolutionary in the general chain of
revolutionary events; or else it comes from a scoundrel,
a supporter of reaction, who is deliberately trying to frighten the working people away from the revolution.” I took
the example of Chernyshevsky because, no matter which
trend the people who call themselves socialists may belong
to, there cannot be any serious disagreement in their appraisal of this individual revolutionary. Everybody will
agree that if an individual revolutionary is appraised from
the point of view of the outwardly useless and often fruitless sacrifices he has made and the nature of his activities
and their connection with the activities of preceding and
succeeding revolutionaries is ignored—if the importance
of his activities is appraised from this point of view, it is
due either to complete ignorance, or to a vicious and hypocritical defence of the interests of reaction, oppression,
exploitation and class tyranny. On this point there can be
no disagreement.
Now I ask you to carry your thoughts from the individual revolutionary to the revolution of a whole nation,
of a whole country. Has any Bolshevik ever denied that the
revolution can be finally victorious only when it embraces
all, or at all events, some of the most important advanced
countries? We have always said that. Did we ever say that
it was possible to emerge from the imperialist war simply
by the men sticking their bayonets into the ground? I
deliberately use this expression which, in the Kerensky
period, I personally, and all our comrades, constantly used
in resolutions, speeches and newspaper articles. We said:
The war cannot be brought to a close by the men sticking
their bayonets into the ground. If there are Tolstoyans
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
343
who think otherwise, they must be pitied as people who have
taken leave of their senses, and you can expect nothing
better from them.
We said that emergence from this war may involve us
in a revolutionary war. We said this from 1915 onwards,
and then later, in the Kerensky period. Of course, revolutionary war is also war, just as arduous, sanguinary and
painful. And when the revolution develops on a world
scale it inevitably arouses resistance on the same world
scale. The situation now being such that all the civilised
countries in the world are fighting against Russia, we must
not be surprised that extremely ignorant peasants are
accusing us of failing to keep our promises. Nothing else
is to be expected from them. In view of their absolute
ignorance, we cannot blame them. Indeed, how can you
expect a very ignorant peasant to understand that there are
different kinds of wars, that there are just and unjust wars,
progressive and reactionary wars, wars waged by advanced
classes and wars waged by backward classes, wars waged
for the purpose of perpetuating class oppression and wars
waged for the purpose of eliminating oppression? To understand this one must be familiar with the class struggle,
with the principles of socialism, and at least a little bit
familiar with the history of revolution. You cannot expect
this from an ignorant peasant.
But when a man who calls himself a democrat, or a socialist, gets up on a platform to make a public statement—
irrespective of what he calls himself, Menshevik, SocialDemocrat, Socialist-Revolutionary, true socialist, adherent
of the Berne International, there are lots of titles of this
sort, titles are cheap—when such an individual gets up and
charges us with having promised peace and called forth
war, what answer should be made to him? Are we to assume
that he is as ignorant as the ignorant peasant who cannot
distinguish one kind of war from another? Are we to assume
that he does not see the difference between the imperialist
war, which was a predatory war, and which has now been
utterly exposed as such—since the Treaty of Versailles only
those who are totally incapable of reasoning and thinking,
or who are totally blind, can fail to see that it was a predatory war on both sides—are we to assume that there is even
344
V. I. L E N I N
one literate person who fails to see the difference between
that predatory war and the war we are waging and which is
assuming world-wide dimensions, because the world bourgeoisie have realised that they must fight their last decisive
battle? We cannot assume any of this. And that is why we
say that anybody who claims to be a democrat, or a socialist, of whatever shade, is a supporter of the bourgeoisie
if he in one way or another, directly or indirectly, spreads
among the people the accusation that the Bolsheviks are
dragging out the Civil War, which is an arduous and painful
war, whereas they promised peace; and this is how we shall
answer him, and we shall take our stand against him just
as we do against Kolchak. Such is our answer. Such is the
entire issue.
The gentlemen of Dyelo Naroda express astonishment and
say: “But we are opposed to Kolchak; what terrible
injustice to persecute us!”
It is a great pity, gentlemen, that you refuse to be logical
and do not wish to understand the simple ABC of politics
from which certain definite deductions must be made. You
say that you are opposed to Kolchak. I take up the newspapers Vsegda Vperyod! and Dyelo Naroda and read the philistine arguments of this type, these moods that are so
numerous and that prevail among the intelligentsia. I say
that every one of you who spreads such accusations among
the people is supporting Kolchak, because he does not
understand the elementary, fundamental difference, which
every literate person sees, between the imperialist war
which we smashed, and the Civil War in which we have
become involved. We never concealed from the people the
fact that we were taking this risk. We are straining every
nerve to defeat the bourgeoisie in this Civil War and to
prevent all possibility of class oppression. There has never
been, nor can there ever be, a revolution that was guaranteed
against a long and arduous struggle, and perhaps filled
with the most desperate sacrifices. Those who are unable
to distinguish between the sacrifices made in the course
of a revolutionary struggle for the sake of its victory, when
all the propertied, all the counter-revolutionary classes
are fighting against the revolution, those who cannot distinguish between these sacrifices and the sacrifices involved
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
345
in a predatory war waged by the exploiters, are either
abysmally ignorant—and such people ought to be made
to learn their ABC, before giving them adult education
they ought to be given the most elementary education—
or they are out-and-out Kolchak-supporting hypocrites,
whatever they may call themselves, or under whichever
title they may try to disguise themselves. And these accusations against the Bolsheviks are the most common and
widespread. They are really linked up with the broad masses
of the working people, because the ignorant peasants find
it difficult to understand; they suffer from all war, no matter
what the war is about. I am not surprised when I hear an
ignorant peasant say: “We had to fight for the tsar, we
fought for the Mensheviks, and now we have to fight for
the Bolsheviks.” This does not surprise me. Indeed, war is
war, and entails endless heavy sacrifices. “The tsar said that
it was a war for freedom and liberation from a yoke; the
Mensheviks said that it was a war for freedom and liberation from a yoke. And now the Bolsheviks say the same thing.
They all say the same thing; how can we sort this all out?”
Indeed, how can an ignorant peasant sort it all out?
Such a man still has to learn elementary politics. But what
can we say about a man who uses such words as “revolution”, “democracy”, and “socialism”, and claims that these
words should be used with understanding. He cannot juggle
with such words unless he wants to be a political faker,
for the difference between a war between two groups of
robbers and a war waged by an oppressed class which has
risen in revolt against all robbery is an elementary, radical
and fundamental difference. The issue is not one of a certain party, class or government justifying war—the real
point at issue is the nature of the war, its class content, which
class is waging it, and what policy is embodied in it.
II
I shall now leave the question of appraising the arduous
and difficult period we are now passing through, and which
is inevitably connected with the revolution, for another
political issue, which also comes up in all debates, and
also gives rise to confusion. This is the question of a bloc
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V. I. L E N I N
with the imperialists, of an alliance, an agreement with
the imperialists.
Probably you have read in the newspapers the names of
the Socialist-Revolutionaries Volsky and, I believe, Svyatitsky, who recently wrote in Izvestia, and issued their
manifesto. They regard themselves as Socialist-Revolutionaries who cannot possibly be accused of having supported
Kolchak. They left Kolchak, they suffered at the hands of
Kolchak, and on coming over to us they rendered us a
service against Kolchak. That is true. But examine the
arguments these citizens advance. See how they appraise
the question of a bloc with the imperialists, of an alliance,
or agreement, with the imperialists. I had occasion to read
their arguments when the authorities combating counterrevolution confiscated their writings, and when I had to
examine their papers to be able to judge correctly the
extent of their association with Kolchak. These are undoubtedly the best of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. In
their writings I found the following argument, “What do you
mean? You want us to repent; you are waiting for us to
repent. Never! We have nothing to repent of! You accuse
us of having entered into a bloc, an agreement with the
Entente, with the imperialists. But did you Bolsheviks
not enter into an agreement with the German imperialists?
What is the Brest peace? Is not the Brest peace an agreement with imperialism? You entered into an agreement
with German imperialism at Brest; we entered into an
agreement with French imperialism; we are quits, we have
nothing to repent of!”
This argument, which I found in the writings of the
persons I have mentioned and of their colleagues, is one
that I also find when I call to mind the newspapers I mentioned and when I try to sum up my impressions of philistine conversations. We constantly hear arguments of this
kind, it is one of the chief political arguments we have to
deal with. I therefore ask you to examine and analyse this
argument, and to study it theoretically. What does it amount
to? Are those right who say: “We democrats and socialists were in a bloc with the Entente; you were in a bloc
with Wilhelm, you concluded the Brest peace. We have
no grounds for mutual reproach. We are quits”? Or are we
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right when we say that those who not merely in words but
in deeds are in agreement with the Entente against the
Bolshevik revolution are supporters of Kolchak? Although
they may deny it a thousand times, although they have
personally deserted Kolchak and have proclaimed to the
whole people that they are opposed to him, their very roots,
the whole nature and significance of their arguments and
their deeds make them Kolchak supporters. Who is right? This
is the fundamental question of the revolution; and some
thought must be given to this.
To explain this point, permit me to draw another
analogy, this time, however, not with an individual revolutionary, but with an individual man in the street. Let us
suppose that you were riding in an automobile and suddenly
your car is surrounded by bandits who point a revolver at
your head. Let us suppose that after this you surrender
your money and weapons to the bandits, and even let them
take the car and ride off. Well? You have given the bandits
weapons and money. That is a fact. Now let us suppose
that another citizen gave these bandits weapons and money
so as to take part in their attacks on peaceful citizens.
In both cases an agreement is reached, whether written
or verbal makes no difference. We can picture to ourselves
a man giving up his revolver, his weapons and his money,
without uttering a word. The nature of the agreement is
clear: “I give you my revolver, my weapons and money,
and you give me the opportunity to rid myself of your
pleasant company.” (Laughter.) The agreement is a fact.
It is also possible for a tacit agreement to be concluded by
the man who gives the bandits weapons and money to
enable them to rob other people and afterwards give him
part of the loot. This, too, is a tacit agreement.
Now I ask you, could any literate person fail to distinguish between these two agreements? You will say that if
a man is unable to distinguish between these two agreements and says, “You gave the bandits money and weapons
and so don’t accuse other people of banditism; what right
have you to accuse other people of banditism?”—such a
man must be a cretin. If you were to meet such a literate
person you would have to admit, or at least 999 out of
1,000 would admit, that he had taken leave of his senses,
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and that it is useless to discuss political, or even criminal,
subjects with such a man.
I now ask you to carry your thoughts from this example
to the comparison between the Brest peace and the agreement with the Entente. What was the Brest peace? Was it
not an act of violence on the part of bandits who had attacked us when we were honestly proposing peace and were
calling upon all nations to overthrow their own bourgeoisie?
It would have been ridiculous had we started by trying to
overthrow the German bourgeoisie! We denounced this
treaty before the whole world as a most predatory, plundering treaty, we condemned it and at first even refused
to sign it, as we counted on the assistance of the German
workers. But when the robbers put a revolver to our heads
we said, take the weapons and the money, we will settle
accounts with you later on by other means. We know
that German imperialism has another enemy, whom blind
people have not noticed, namely, the German workers.
Can this agreement with imperialism be put on a par with
the agreement entered into by democrats, socialists and
Socialist-Revolutionaries—don’t laugh, the more radical
the title the more resonant it sounds—with the agreement
they entered into with the Entente to fight against the
workers of their own country? But that is what they did,
and are doing to this day. The most influential Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries, those with European reputations, are living abroad even today, and they are in
alliance with the Entente. I do not know whether this is a
written agreement; probably not, clever people do such
things on the quiet. But it is obvious that such an agreement exists, since they are being made such a fuss of, are
given passports, and wireless messages are being sent all
over the world stating that Axelrod delivered a speech
today, that Savinkov, or Avksentyev, will deliver a speech
tomorrow, and that Breshkovskaya will speak the day
after tomorrow. Is this not an agreement, even if a tacit
one? But is it the same kind of agreement with the imperialists as we concluded? Outwardly it resembles ours as
much as the act of a man who gives weapons and money
to bandits resembles any act of this nature, irrespective of
its object and character, at all events, irrespective of the
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object for which I give the bandits money and weapons:
whether it is to get rid of them when they attack me and
I find myself in a position where if I do not give them my
revolver they will kill me; or I give the bandits money
and weapons for the purpose of robbery, of which I am
aware, and in the proceeds of which I am to share.
“I, of course, call this liberating Russia from the
dictatorship of tyrants. I, of course, am a democrat, because
I support the famous Siberian or Archangel democracy,
and am fighting, of course, for a Constituent Assembly.
Don’t dare to suspect that I am pursuing some evil object.
And even if I am rendering assistance to those bandits, the
British, French and American imperialists, I am doing so
only in the interests of democracy, of the Constituent
Assembly, of government by the people, of the unity of
the working classes of the population, and in order to overthrow those tyrants and usurpers, the Bolsheviks!”
Noble aims, no doubt. But has not everybody whoengages in politics heard that politics are not judged by bare
statements but by real class content? Which class do you
serve? If you are in agreement with the imperialists, are
you participating in imperialist banditism or not?
In my “Letter to American Workers”, I spoke, among
other things, about the American revolutionary people
fighting to liberate themselves from England in the eighteenth century, when they were waging one of the first
and greatest wars for real liberation in human history, one
of the few really revolutionary wars in human history—
and this great revolutionary American people, in fighting
for their liberation, entered into agreements with the bandits of Spanish and French imperialism, who at that time
had colonies in neighbouring parts of America. In alliance
with these bandits, the American people fought the English
and liberated themselves from them. Have you ever met
any literate person anywhere in the world, have you seen
any socialists, Socialist-Revolutionaries, representatives
of democracy, or whatever it is they call themselves—even
the Mensheviks—have you ever heard that any of these have
the temerity publicly to blame the American people for
this, to say that they violated the principle of democracy,
freedom, and so forth? Such a crank has not yet been born.
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But today, we get people here who call themselves by these
titles, and even claim a right to belong to the same International that we belong to, and say that it is merely a piece
of Bolshevik mischievousness—and everybody knows
that the Bolsheviks are mischievous—to organise their
own International and refuse to join the good, old, common to all, united, Berne International!
And there are people who say: “We have nothing to
repent of. You entered into an agreement with Wilhelm,
we entered into an agreement with the Entente, we are
quits!”
I say that if these people have even an elementary knowledge of politics they are Kolchak supporters, no matter
how much they personally may have denied this, no matter
how much they personally are sick and tired of Kolchak,
no matter how much they have suffered at his hands and in
spite of their having come over to our side. They are Kolchak supporters because it is impossible to imagine that
they do not see the difference between an agreement one is
compelled to make in the course of the struggle against
the exploiters—and which the exploited classes have been
compelled to make over and over again throughout the
history of the revolution—and the conduct of our most
influential alleged democrats, representatives of our “socialist” intelligentsia, some of whom yesterday and some today
entered into agreements with the bandits and robbers of
international imperialism against a section—as they say—
a section of the working classes of their own country. These
are Kolchak people, and the only relations possible with
them are those between conscious revolutionaries and
Kolchak supporters.
III
I now come to the next question, that of our attitude
towards democracy in general.
I have already said that the democrats and socialists
plead democracy as the most common justification, the
most common defence of the political stand taken against
us. The most emphatic supporter of this point of view in
European literature is, as you, of course, know, Kautsky,
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the ideological leader of the Second International, and to
this day a member of the Berne International. “The Bolsheviks have chosen a method which violates democracy;
the Bolsheviks have chosen the method of dictatorship.
Hence, their cause is unjust,” he says. This argument has
been repeated a thousand and a million times, it occurs
constantly in all periodicals, including the newspapers
I have mentioned. It is being constantly repeated by all
intellectuals, and sometimes the ordinary man in the street
sub-consciously repeats it in his arguments. “Democracy
means freedom, it means equality, it means settling
questions by a majority. What can be higher than freedom,
equality, and majority decisions? Since you Bolsheviks
have departed from this, and even have the presumption
to say publicly that you stand above freedom, equality
and majority decisions, you must not be surprised, nor
must you complain, when we call you usurpers and tyrants!”
We are not in the least surprised at this, for what we
desire most of all is clarity; and the only thing we rely
on is that the advanced section of the working people should
really be conscious of its position. Yes, we said, and say
it all the time in our programme, in the programme of our
Party, that we shall not allow ourselves to be deceived by
such high-sounding slogans as freedom, equality and the
will of the majority, and that we shall treat as aiders and
abettors of Kolchak those who call themselves democrats,
adherents of pure democracy, adherents of consistent
democracy and who, directly or indirectly, oppose it to the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Get this clear—you must get it clear. Are the pure
democrats guilty of merely preaching pure democracy,
defending it from the usurpers, or are they guilty of being
on the side of the propertied classes, on the side of Kolchak?
We shall begin our examination with the question of
freedom. Needless to say, for every revolution, socialist
or democratic, freedom is a very, very important slogan.
But our programme says that if freedom runs counter to
the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital, it is
a deception. And every one of you who has read Marx—
and, I think, even every one who has read at least one
popular exposition of Marx’s theories—knows that Marx
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devoted the greater part of his life, the greater part of his
literary work, and the greater part of his scientific studies
to ridiculing freedom, equality, the will of the majority,
and all the Benthams who wrote so beautifully about these
things, and to proving that these phrases were merely a
screen to cover up the freedom of the commodity owners,
the freedom of capital, which these owners use to oppress
the masses of the working people.
At the present time, when things have reached the stage
of overthrowing the rule of capital all over the world, or
at all events in one country; in this historical epoch, when
the struggle of the oppressed working people for the complete
overthrow of capital and the abolition of commodity production stands in the forefront, we say that all those who
in such a political situation talk about “freedom in general”, who in the name of this freedom oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat are doing nothing more nor less than
aiding and abetting the exploiters, for unless freedom
promotes the emancipation of labour from the yoke of
capital, it is a deception, as we openly say in our Party
programme. Perhaps this is superfluous from the point
of view of the outward structure of the programme, but it
is most fundamental from the point of view of our propaganda and agitation, from the point of view of the principle of the proletarian struggle and proletarian power.
We know perfectly well that we have to contend against
world capital; we know perfectly well that at one time it
was the task of world capital to create freedom, that it
overthrew feudal slavery, that it created bourgeois freedom.
We know perfectly well that this was epoch-making progress. And yet we say that we are opposing capitalism in
general, republican capitalism, democratic capitalism, free
capitalism; and, of course, we know that it will raise the
standard of liberty against us. But to this we have our
answer, and we deemed it necessary to give this answer in
our programme—all freedom is deception if it runs counter
to the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital.
But, perhaps, this is not the case? Perhaps there is no
contradiction between freedom and the emancipation of
labour from the yoke of capital? Take the West-European
countries that you have visited, or at least have read about.
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Every book you read describes their system as the freest
system. And now, these civilised countries of Western
Europe—France and Britain—and America have raised
this standard, are marching against the Bolsheviks “in the
name of freedom”. Only the other day—we now get French
newspapers but rarely because we are completely surrounded, but we do get wireless information, because, after all,
they cannot blockade the air, and we intercept foreign
wireless messages—the other day I had the opportunity
of reading a wireless message that was sent out by the
predatory government of France to the effect that in fighting the Bolsheviks and supporting their opponents, France
was remaining true to her “lofty ideals of freedom”. We
hear this sort of thing at every step, it is the general tone
of their polemics against us.
But what do they mean by freedom? By freedom these
civilised Frenchmen, Englishmen and Americans mean, say,
freedom of assembly. The constitution should contain the
clause: “Freedom of assembly for all citizens.” “This,”
they say, “is the substance, this is the principal manifestation of freedom. But you Bolsheviks have violated freedom of assembly.”
To this we answer indeed, the freedom that you British,
French and American gentlemen preach is a deception if it
runs counter to the emancipation of labour from the yoke of
capital. You have forgotten a detail, you civilised gentlemen. You have forgotten that your freedom is inscribed
in a constitution which sanctions private property. That
is the whole point.
In your constitution you have freedom side by side with
private property. The fact that you recognise freedom
of assembly, of course, marks vast progress compared with
the feudal system, with medievalism, with serfdom. All
socialists admitted this when they took advantage of the
freedom of bourgeois society to teach the proletariat how
to throw off the yoke of capitalism.
But your freedom is only freedom on paper, but not in
fact. By that I mean that the large halls that are to be
found in big cities—like this hall, for example—belong
to the capitalists and landowners, and are sometimes called
“Assembly Rooms for the Gentry”. You may freely assemble
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in these halls, citizens of the Russian Democratic Republic, but remember that they are private property and,
pardon me for saying so, you must respect private property,
otherwise you will be Bolsheviks, criminals, murderers,
robbers and mischief-makers. But we say: “We shall change
all this. We shall first convert these Assembly Rooms
into premises for workers’ organisations and then begin to
talk about freedom of assembly.” You accuse us of violating
freedom. But we say that all freedom is deception if it is
not subordinated to the task of emancipating labour from
the yoke of capital. The freedom of assembly inscribed in
the constitutions of all bourgeois republics is a deception
because in order to assemble in a civilised country, which
after all has not abolished winter, has not changed its
climate, it is necessary to have premises in which to assemble, and the best of these premises are private property.
First, we shall confiscate the best premises and then begin
to talk about freedom.
We say that to grant freedom of assembly to the
capitalists would be a heinous crime against the working
people; it would mean freedom of assembly for counterrevolutionaries. We say to the bourgeois intellectual gentlemen, to the gentlemen who advocate democracy—you lie
when you throw in our face the accusation of violating
freedom. When your great bourgeois revolutionaries made a
revolution in England in 1649, and in France in 1792-93,
they did not grant freedom of assembly to the royalists.
The French revolution is called great because it did not
suffer from the flabbiness, half-heartedness and phrasemongering which distinguished many of the revolutions
of 1848, but was an effective revolution which, after overthrowing the royalists, completely crushed them. And
we shall do the same thing with the capitalist gentlemen;
for we know that in order to emancipate the working people
from the yoke of capital we must deprive the capitalists
of freedom of assembly; their “freedom” must be abolished,
or curtailed. This will help to emancipate labour from the
yoke of capital; it will help the cause of that true freedom
under which there will be no buildings inhabited by single
families, and which belong to private individuals, such
as landowners, capitalists, or to joint-stock companies.
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When that time comes, when people have forgotten that it
was possible for public buildings to be somebody’s property, we shall be in favour of complete “freedom”. When
the world is inhabited only by those who work, and when
people have forgotten that it was possible for idlers to have
been members of society—this will not be very soon, and
the bourgeois and bourgeois intellectual gentlemen are to
blame for the delay—we shall then be in favour of freedom
of assembly for all. At the present time, however, freedom
of assembly would mean freedom of assembly for the capitalists, for counter-revolutionaries. We are fighting against
them, we are resisting them, and we say that we deprive
them of this freedom.
We are marching into battle—this is the meaning of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Gone is the time of
naïve, utopian, fantastic, mechanical and intellectual
socialism, when people imagined that it was sufficient to
convince the majority, that it was sufficient to paint a
beautiful picture of socialist society to persuade the majority to adopt socialism. Gone, too, is the time when it was
possible to entertain oneself and others with these children’s
fairy-tales. Marxism, which recognises the necessity for
the class struggle, asserts that mankind can reach the goal
of socialism only through the dictatorship of the proletariat. The word dictatorship is a cruel, stern, bloody and
painful one; it is not a word to play with. Socialists advance
this slogan because they know that the exploiters will
surrender only after a desperate and relentless struggle,
and that they will try to cover up their own rule by means
of all sorts of high-sounding words.
Freedom of assembly—what can be loftier, what can be
finer than this term? Is the development of the working
people and of their mentality conceivable without freedom
of assembly? Are the principles of humanity conceivable
without freedom of assembly? But we say that the freedom
of assembly inscribed in the constitution of Great Britain
and the United States of America is a deception because it
ties the hands of the masses of the working people during
the whole period of their transition to socialism; it is a
deception because we know perfectly well that the bourgeoisie will do all in their power to overthrow this new
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government, which is so unusual, and which seems so
“monstrous” at first. Those who have thought about the
class struggle and have anything like a clear and definite
idea of the relations between the workers in revolt and the
bourgeoisie, who have been overthrown in one country,
but have not yet been overthrown in all countries, and who,
because they have not been overthrown everywhere, are
rushing into the struggle with greater ferocity than ever,
will agree that it cannot be otherwise.
It is precisely after the bourgeoisie is overthrown that
the class struggle assumes its acutest forms. And we have
no use for those democrats and socialists who deceive themselves and deceive others by saying: “The bourgeoisie have
been overthrown, the struggle is all over.” The struggle is
not over, it has only just started, because, to this day, the
bourgeoisie have not reconciled themselves to the idea that
they have been overthrown. On the eve of the October Revolution they were very nice and polite, and Milyukov, Chernov and the Novaya Zhizn people said jestingly: “Now,
please, Bolshevik gentlemen, form a Cabinet, take power
yourselves for a few weeks, that would be a great help to
us!” This is exactly what Chernov wrote on behalf of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, what Milyukov wrote in Rech,
and what the semi-Menshevik Novaya Zhizn wrote. They
spoke in jest because they did not take matters seriously.
But now they see that matters are serious, and the British,
French and Swiss bourgeoisie, who thought that their
“democratic republics” were armour which protected them, see
and realise that matters have become serious, and now
they are all arming. If only you could see what is going on
in free Switzerland, how, literally, every bourgeois is
arming, how they are forming a White Guard, because they
know that it is now a matter of preserving the privileges
which enable them to keep millions of people in a state of
wage-slavery. The struggle has now assumed world-wide
dimensions, and therefore, anybody who opposes us with
such catchwords as “democracy”, and “freedom”, takes the
side of the propertied classes, deceives the people, for
he fails to understand that up to now freedom and democracy have meant freedom and democracy for the propertied
classes and only crumbs from their table for the propertyless.
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What is freedom of assembly when the working people
are crushed by slavery to capital and by toil for the
benefit of capital? It is a deception; and in order to achieve
freedom for the working people it is first of all necessary
to overcome the resistance of the exploiters, and since
I am faced with the resistance of a whole class, it is obvious
that I cannot promise this class either freedom, equality,
or majority decisions.
IV
I shall now pass from freedom to equality. This is a much
more profound subject. This brings us to a still more
serious, a more painful question, one that gives rise to
considerable disagreement.
The revolution in its course sweeps away one exploiting
class after another. First, it swept away the monarchy,
and by equality implied an elected government, a republic.
Proceeding further it swept away the landowners; and you
know that the keynote of the entire struggle against the
medieval system, against feudalism, was the slogan “equality”. All are equal irrespective of social-estate; all are
equal, millionaires and paupers alike. This is what the
great revolutionaries of the period that has gone into history as the period of the great French Revolution said,
thought and sincerely believed. The slogan of the revolution against the landowners was equality, and by equality
was meant that the millionaires and the workers should
have equal rights. The revolution developed. It said that
“equality”—we did not specify this in our programme,
for one cannot go on repeating the same thing endlessly;
it is as clear as what we said about freedom—that equality
is a deception if it runs counter to the emancipation of
labour from the yoke of capital. That is what we say, and
it is absolutely true. We say that a democratic republic
with present-day equality is a fraud, a deception; here
there is no equality, nor can there be. It is prevented by
the private ownership of the means of production and money,
capital. It is possible, at one stroke, to confiscate privatelyowned mansions and fine buildings, it is possible in a
relatively short period to confiscate capital and the means
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of production. But try to abolish the private ownership
of money.
Money is congealed social wealth, congealed social labour. Money is a token which enables its owner to take
tribute from all the working people. Money is a survival
of yesterday’s exploitation. That is what money is. Can
it be abolished at one stroke? No. Even before the socialist revolution the socialists wrote that it is impossible to
abolish money at one stroke, and our experience corroborates this. There must be very considerable technical and,
what is much more difficult and much more important, organisational achievement before we can abolish money;
and until then we must put up with equality in words,
in the constitution; we must put up with a situation
in which everybody who possesses money practically has
the right to exploit. We could not abolish money at one
stroke. We say that for the time being money will remain,
and remain for a fairly long time in the transition period
from the old capitalist system to the new socialist system.
Equality is a deception if it runs counter to the emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital.
Engels was a thousand times right when he said that the
concept of equality is a most absurd and stupid prejudice
if it does not imply the abolition of classes. 60 Bourgeois
professors attempted to use the concept equality as grounds
for accusing us of wanting all men to be alike. They themselves invented this absurdity and wanted to ascribe it
to the socialists. But in their ignorance they did not know
that the socialists—and precisely the founders of modern
scientific socialism, Marx and Engels—had said: equality
is an empty phrase if it does not imply the abolition of
classes. We want to abolish classes, and in this sense we
are for equality. But the claim that we want all men to
be alike is just nonsense, the silly invention of an intellectual who sometimes conscientiously strikes a pose, juggles
with words, but says nothing—I don’t care whether he calls
himself a writer, a scholar, or anything else.
But we say that our goal is equality, and by that we
mean the abolition of classes. Then the class distinction
between workers and peasants should be abolished. That is
exactly our object. A society in which the class distinction
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between workers and peasants still exists is neither a communist society nor a socialist society. True, if the word
socialism is interpreted in a certain sense, it might be
called a socialist society, but that would be mere sophistry,
an argument about words. Socialism is the first stage of
communism; but it is not worth while arguing about words.
One thing is clear, and that is, that as long as the class
distinction between workers and peasants exists, it is no
use talking about equality, unless we want to bring grist
to the mill of the bourgeoisie. The peasantry constitute a
class of the patriarchal era, a class which has been reared
by decades and centuries of slavery; and throughout all
these decades the peasants existed as small proprietors,
first, under the heel of other classes, and later, formally
free and equal, but as property-owners and the owners of
food products.
This brings us to the question which most of all rouses
the ire of our enemies, which most of all creates doubt in
the minds of inexperienced and thoughtless people, and
which separates us most of all from those would-be democrats and socialists who are offended because we do not
recognise them as such, but call them supporters of the
capitalists, perhaps due to their ignorance, but supporters
of the capitalists all the same.
Their social conditions, production, living and economic
conditions make the peasant half worker and half huckster.
This is a fact. And you cannot get away from this fact
until you have abolished money, until you have abolished
exchange. And for this years and years of the stable rule
by the proletariat is needed; for only the proletariat is
capable of vanquishing the bourgeoisie. We are told: “You
are violators of equality, you have violated equality not
only with the exploiters—‘with this I am inclined to
agree’, some Socialist-Revolutionary or Menshevik who does
not know what he is talking about may say—but you have
violated equality between the workers and the peasants,
you have violated the equality of ‘labour democracy’,
you are criminals!” In answer to this we say: “Yes, we
have violated equality between the workers and peasants,
and we assert that you who stand for this equality are
supporters of Kolchak.” Recently I read a splendid article
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by Comrade Germanov, in Pravda, in which he deals with
the theses drawn up by Citizen Sher, one of the most
“socialistic” of the Menshevik Social-Democrats. These theses
were submitted to one of our co-operative organisations,
and they are of such a nature that they deserve to be engraved on a tablet and hung up in every volost executive committee with an inscription underneath stating: “This is
Kolchak’s man.”
I know perfectly well that Citizen Sher and his friends
will call me a slanderer for this, and perhaps something
worse. Nevertheless, I invite those people who have learned
the ABC of political economy and of politics to make a very
careful study to see who is right and who is wrong. Citizen
Sher says that the Soviet government’s food policy, and its
economic policy in general, is all wrong; that it is necessary, gradually at first, and then to an increasing degree,
to grant freedom to trade in food products, and to safeguard private property.
I say that this is Kolchak’s economic programme, his
economic basis. I assert that anybody who has read Marx,
especially the first chapter of Capital, anybody who has
read at least Kautsky’s popular outline of Marx’s theories
entitled The Economic Theories of Karl Marx, must come to
the conclusion that in the midst of a proletarian revolution
against the bourgeoisie, at a time when landowner and capitalist property is being abolished, when the country that
has been ruined by four years of imperialist war is starving,
freedom to trade in grain would mean freedom for the
capitalists, freedom to restore the rule of capital. This is
Kolchak’s economic programme, for Kolchak does not rest
on air.
It is rather silly to denounce Kolchak only because of
the atrocities he committed against the workers, or even
because he flogged schoolmistresses for sympathising with
the Bolsheviks. This is a vulgar defence of democracy, a
silly accusation against Kolchak. Kolchak operates with
the means he has at hand. But what is his economic basis?
His basis is freedom of trade. This is what he stands for;
and this is why all the capitalists support him. But you
say: “I have left Kolchak, I do not support him.” This
stands to your credit, of course; but it does not prove that
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you have a head on your shoulders and are able to think.
This is the answer we give to these people, without casting
any slur on the honour of the Socialist-Revolutionaries
and the Mensheviks who deserted Kolchak when they realised that he is a tyrant. But if such people, in a country
which is fighting a desperate struggle against Kolchak,
continue to fight for the “equality of labour democracy”, for
freedom to trade in grain, they are still supporting Kolchak, the only trouble being that they do not understand
this and cannot reason logically.
Kolchak—it does not matter whether his name is Kolchak or Denikin, their uniforms may be different, but
their natures are the same—is able to hold out because,
having captured a region rich in grain, he grants freedom
to trade in grain and permits the free restoration of capitalism. This was the case in all revolutions, and this will
be the case in this country if we abandon the dictatorship
of the proletariat for the sake of the “freedom” and “equality” of the democratic, Socialist-Revolutionary, LeftMenshevik and other gentlemen, sometimes including the
anarchists—the number of titles is infinite. In the Ukraine
at the present time, every gang chooses a political title,
each more free and democratic than the other, and there is a
gang to every uyezd.
The “advocates of the interests of the working peasantry”,
mainly the Socialist-Revolutionaries, propose equality
between the workers and the peasants. Others, like Citizen
Sher, have studied Marxism, but they still do not understand that there can be no equality between the workers
and the peasants in the period of transition from capitalism
to socialism, and that those who promise this should be
regarded as advocating Kolchak’s programme, even if
they do so unwittingly. I assert that anybody who gives
some thought to the actual conditions prevailing in this
completely ruined country will understand this.
The “socialists” who assert that in this country we are
in the period of the bourgeois revolution, constantly accuse
us of having introduced “consumers’” communism. Some
of them say it is communism for soldiers, and imagine that
they are superior to this, imagine that they have risen
above this “base” form of communism. But these are simply
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people who juggle with words. They have seen books,
studied hooks, repeat what is in books, but they understand
nothing about what the books say. There are scholars, and
even very learned scholars, like that. They have read in
books that socialism represents the highest development of
production. Kautsky does nothing else but repeat this sort
of thing even now. The other day I read in a German newspaper, which got here by accident, a report of the last
Congress of Workers’ Councils in Germany. Kautsky was
one of the rapporteurs at this Congress, and in his report he
emphasised—not he personally, but his wife; he was sick,
and so his wife read the report—in this report he emphasised
that socialism represents the highest development of production, that without production neither capitalism nor
socialism was possible, and that this the German workers
did not understand.
Poor German workers. They are fighting Scheidemann and
Noske, fighting against the butchers, striving to overthrow
the power of Scheidemann and Noske, the butchers who
continue to call themselves Social-Democrats, and they
think civil war is going on! Liebknecht was murdered, and
so was Rosa Luxemburg. All the Russian bourgeois say—
and this was stated in an Ekaterinodar newspaper: “This
is what ought to be done to our Bolsheviks!” This is exactly
what this paper stated. Those who understand what is
going on know perfectly well that this is the opinion of the
entire world bourgeoisie. We must defend ourselves. Scheidemann and Noske are waging civil war against the proletariat. War is war. The German workers think that they are
in a state of civil war and all other questions are of minor
importance. The first task is to feed the workers. Kautsky
thinks that this is “soldiers’” or “consumers’” communism,
and that it is necessary to develop production!...
Oh, how clever you are, gentlemen! But how can production be developed in a country that is being plundered
and ruined by the imperialists, and which lacks coal, raw
materials and machinery? “Develop production!” There is
not a meeting of the Council of People’s Commissars, or of
the Council of Defence that does not share out the last
millions of poods of coal or oil, and find ourselves in a
terrible fix when the commissars take the last scraps and
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even then no one has enough, and we have to decide which
factory to close down, in which place to leave the workers
without work—a painful question, but one we are compelled
to decide because we have no coal. The coal is in the Donets
Basin; the coal has been destroyed by the German invaders.
This is a typical state of affairs. Take Belgium or Poland.
The same thing is happening everywhere as a consequence of
the imperialist war. Hence, unemployment and starvation
are likely to last many years, for some flooded mines take
many years to restore. And yet we are told that socialism
means increasing output. You have read books, good, kind
gentlemen, you have written books, but you don’t
understand a scrap of what is in the books. (Applause.)
Of course, if it were a case of capitalist society in peacetime, peacefully developing into socialism, there would be
no more urgent task before us than that of increasing output.
But the little word “if” makes all the difference. If only
socialism had come into being peacefully, in the way the
capitalist gentlemen did not want to see it born. But there
was a slight hitch. Even if there had been no war, the
capitalist gentlemen would have done all in their power to
prevent such a peaceful evolution. Great revolutions, even
when they commence peacefully, as was the case with the
great French Revolution, end in furious wars which are
instigated by the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie. Nor
can it be otherwise, if we look at it from the point of view
of the class struggle and not from the point of view of philistine phrase-mongering about liberty, equality, labour
democracy and the will of the majority, of all the dullwitted, philistine phrase-mongering to which the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and all these “democrats”
treat us. There can be no peaceful evolution towards socialism. In the present period, after the imperialist war, it is
ridiculous to expect peaceful evolution, especially in a
ruined country. Take France. France is one of the victors,
and yet the production of grain there has dropped to half.
In Britain they are saying that they are now paupers—
I read this in an English bourgeois newspaper. And yet the
Communists in a ruined country are blamed because industry
is at a standstill! Whoever says this is either an utter idiot—
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V. I. L E N I N
even if he thrice calls himself a leader of the Berne International—or else a traitor to the workers.
The primary task in a ruined country is to save the working
people. The primary productive force of human society as a
whole, is the workers, the working people. If they survive,
we shall save and restore everything.
We shall have to put up with many years of poverty,
retrogression to barbarism. The imperialist war has thrown
us back to barbarism; but if we save the working people,
if we save the primary productive force of human society—
the workers—we shall recover everything, but if we fail
to save them, we shall perish, so that those who are now
shouting about “consumers’”, or “soldiers’”, communism,
who look down upon others with contempt and imagine that
they are superior to these Bolshevik Communists, are, I
repeat, absolutely ignorant of political economy, and pick
out passages from books like a scholar whose head is a card
index box filled with quotations from books, which he picks
out as he needs them; but if a new situation arises which
is not described in any book, he becomes confused and
grabs the wrong quotation from the box.
At the present time, when the country is ruined, our main
and fundamental task is to save the lives of the workers,
to save the workers, for the workers are dying because the
factories are at a standstill, and the factories are at a standstill because there is no fuel, and because our production
is all artificial, industry is isolated from raw material
sources. It is the same thing all over the world. Raw materials for the Russian cotton mills must be transported from
Egypt, America, or the nearer Turkestan. Try to obtain these
when the counter-revolutionary gangs and the British forces
have captured Ashkhabad and Krasnovodsk. Try to obtain
them from Egypt or America when the railways lie in ruins,
when they are at a standstill because there is no coal.
We must save the workers even if they are unable to
work. If we keep them alive for the next few years we shall
save the country, save society and socialism. If we don’t,
we shall slip back into wage-slavery. This is how things
stand with the socialism that springs not from the imagination of a peaceful simpleton who calls himself a SocialDemocrat, but from actual reality, from the fierce, desper-
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ately fierce class struggle. This is a fact. We must sacrifice
everything to save the lives of the workers. And in the
light of this, when people come to us and say they are in
favour of the equality of labour democracy, whereas the
Communists do not even allow equality between the workers
and peasants, our answer is: the workers and peasants are
equal as working people, but the well-fed grain profiteer
is not the equal of the hungry worker. This is the only
reason why our Constitution says that the workers and
peasants are not equal.
Do you say that they ought to be equal? Let us weigh
and count it up. Take sixty peasants and ten workers. The
sixty peasants possess surplus stocks of grain. They are
clothed in rags, but they have bread. Take the ten workers.
After the imperialist war they, too, are in rags, but they
are also exhausted, they have no bread, fuel or raw materials. The factories are idle. Well, are they equal? Should
the sixty peasants have the right to decide and the ten workers be obliged to obey? The great principle of equality, unity
of labour democracy and deciding by a majority vote!
That is what they tell us. And we tell them that they
are mere clowns who confuse the hunger problem and obscure
it with their high-sounding phrases.
We ask you whether the workers in a ruined country
where the factories are idle ought to submit to the decision
of the majority of peasants when the latter refuse to deliver
their surplus stocks of grain. Have they the right to take
these surplus stocks, by force, if necessary, if there is no
other way? Give us a straightforward answer! But when we
get right down to brass tacks they begin to twist and wriggle.
Industry is ruined in all countries, and it will remain
in that state for several years, because it is easy to set
fire to factories or to flood mines, it is easy to blow up
railway wagons and to wreck locomotives—any fool can do
that, even if he calls himself a German or French officer,
and is very efficient, especially when he has good instruments for causing explosions, good fire-arms, and so forth.
But it is a very difficult matter to restore it all. That will
take years.
The peasantry constitute a special class. As working
people they are hostile to capitalist exploitation; but at
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V. I. L E N I N
the same time they are property-owners. For centuries the
peasant has been brought up to believe that the grain is
his and he is at liberty to sell it. “This is my right,” each
one thinks, “because it is the fruit of my labour, my sweat
and blood.” This mentality cannot be changed overnight.
It can be changed only as a result of a long and stern struggle.
Whoever imagines that socialism can be achieved by one
person convincing another, and that one a third, is at best
an infant, or else a political hypocrite; and, of course, the
majority of those who speak on political platforms belong
to the latter category.
The whole point is that the peasants are accustomed to
having the right to trade in grain. After we had abolished
the capitalist institutions we found that there was still
another force which kept capitalism going—the force of
habit. And the more resolutely we abolished the institutions
on which capitalism was based, the more strongly we felt
the effects of this other force on which capitalism was
based—the force of habit. Under favourable circumstances,
institutions can be smashed at one stroke; but habit, never,
no matter how favourable circumstances may be. Although
we have given all the land to the peasants, have liberated
them from landed proprietorship, and have swept away
everything that held them in bondage, they nevertheless
continue to think that “freedom” means freedom to trade in
grain; and they regard as tyranny the compulsory surrendering of surplus stocks of grain at fixed prices. Why, what
do you mean by “surrender”? they ask indignantly, especially since our grain supply apparatus is still defective
because the entire bourgeois intelligentsia is on the side
of Sukharevka. 61 Naturally, this machinery has to rely on
people who are only just learning, at best—if they are
conscientious and devoted to their task—will learn their
business in a few years, and until that time the machinery
will be defective, and sometimes all sorts of rascals who call
themselves Communists will find their way into it. This
danger threatens every ruling party, the victorious proletariat of every country, for it is impossible either to break
the resistance of the bourgeoisie or to build up efficient
machinery overnight. We know perfectly well that the
machinery of the Commissariat of Food is still bad. Re-
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367
cently a scientific statistical investigation was made into
the food conditions of the workers in the non-agricultural
gubernias. The investigation showed that the workers
obtain half their food from the Commissariat of Food and
the other half from the profiteers; for the first half they pay
one-tenth of their total expenditure on food, and for the
other half they pay nine-tenths.
The first half of the food supplies, collected and delivered by the Commissariat of Food, is badly collected, of
course, but it is collected on socialist and not on capitalist
lines. It is collected by defeating the profiteers, and not by
compromising with them; it is collected by sacrificing all
other interests in the world, including the interests of the
formal “equality” which the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Co. make so much fuss about, to the interests
of the starving workers. You keep your “equality”, gentlemen, and we shall keep our hungry workers we have saved
from starvation. No matter how much the Mensheviks may
accuse us of violating “equality”, the fact is that we have
solved half our food problem in spite of unprecedented and
incredible difficulties. And we say that if sixty peasants
have surplus stocks of grain and ten workers are starving,
we must not talk about “equality” in general, or about “the
equality of working people”, but say that it is the bounden
duty of the sixty peasants to submit to the decisions of the
ten workers and to give them, or at least to loan them,
their surplus stocks of grain.
The science of political economy, if anybody has learned
anything from it, the history of revolution, the history of
political evolution throughout the whole of the nineteenth
century show that the peasants follow the lead of either the
workers or the bourgeoisie. Nor can they do otherwise.
Some democrats may, of course, take exception to this,
others may think that, being a malicious Marxist, I am
slandering the peasants. They say the peasants constitute
the majority, they are working people, and yet cannot
follow their own road. Why?
If you don’t know why, I would say to such citizens,
read the elements of Marx’s political economy in Kautsky’s
popular exposition, think about the evolution of any of the
great revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
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V. I. L E N I N
ries, about the political history of any country in the nineteenth century, and you will learn why. The economics
of capitalist society are such that the ruling power can be
only capital or the proletariat which has overthrown
capital.
There are no other forces in the economics of this society.
A peasant is half worker and half huckster. He is a worker because he earns his bread by the sweat of his brow and
is exploited by the landowners, capitalists and merchants.
He is a huckster because he sells grain, an article of necessity, an article for which a man will give up all his possessions if there is a shortage of it. Hunger is no man’s
friend. People will pay a thousand rubles, any sum of
money, will give up all their property, for bread.
The peasant cannot be blamed for this; he is living under
a commodity economy and has been for scores and hundreds
of years, and is accustomed to exchange grain for money.
You cannot change a habit or abolish money overnight.
To abolish money you must organise the distribution of
products for hundreds of millions of people, and this is
something that must take many years. And so, as long as
the commodity system exists, as long as there are starving
workers side by side with well-fed peasants who are concealing their surplus stocks of grain, the antagonism of workers’
and peasants’ interests will persist. And whoever attempts
to use phrases like “freedom”, “equality” and “labour democracy” to brush aside this real antagonism created by
the actual state of affairs, is at best a mere phrase-monger,
and at worst a hypocritical champion of capitalism. If
capitalism defeats the revolution it will do so by taking
advantage of the ignorance of the peasants, by bribing them
and luring them with the prospect of a return to freedom of
trade. Actually, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries side with capitalism against socialism.
The economic programme of Kolchak, Denikin and all the
Russian whiteguards is freedom to trade. They understand
this, and it is not their fault that Citizen Sher does not.
The economic facts of life do not change because a certain
party does not understand them. The slogan of the bourgeoisie is freedom to trade. Efforts are made to beguile
the peasants by asking them whether it would not be better
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to live in the good old way? Whether it would not be better
to live freely by the free sale of the fruits of farm labour?
What could be fairer? This is what those who consciously
support Kolchak say, and they are right from the point of
view of the interests of capital. To restore the power of
capital in Russia it is necessary to rely on tradition—
on the prejudices of the peasants as against their common
sense, on their old habits of trading on the open market,
and it is necessary forcibly to crush the resistance of the
workers. There is no other way. The Kolchaks are right
from the point of view of capital; their economic and political programme ties up neatly, there are no loose ends;
they know there is a connection between freedom for peasants to trade and shooting down the workers. They are
connected even though Citizen Sher is unaware of it. Freedom to trade in grain is the economic programme of Kolchak;
the shooting of tens of thousands of workers—as occurred
in Finland—is a necessary means of realising this programme, because the workers will not voluntarily surrender
their gains. The connection cannot be broken, yet the
Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries, who are totally
ignorant of economic science and politics, who, being terrified philistines, have forgotten the ABC of socialism, are
trying to make us forget this connection by talking about
“equality” and “freedom”, by shouting about our violating
the principle of equality of “labour democracy” and saying
that our Constitution is “unfair”.
The vote of one worker is equal to several peasant votes.
Is that unfair?
No, in the period when it is necessary to overthrow
capital it is quite fair. I know where you have borrowed your
conception of fairness from; you have borrowed it from
yesterday’s capitalist era. The equality, the freedom of
commodity owners—that is your conception of fairness.
A petty-bourgeois survival of petty-bourgeois prejudices—
that is what your fairness, your equality, your labour
democracy amount to. We, however, subordinate fairness
to the interests of defeating capital. And capital can be
defeated only by the united efforts of the proletariat.
Can tens of millions of peasants be firmly united against
capital, against freedom of trade, overnight? No, economic
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V. I. L E N I N
conditions would prevent it even if the peasants were quite
free and much more cultured. It cannot be done because
different economic conditions and long years of preparation
are needed for this. And who will make these preparations?
Either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie.
Owing to their economic status in bourgeois society
the peasants must follow either the workers or the bourgeoisie. There is no middle way. They may waver, become
confused, conjure up all sorts of things; they may blame,
swear, curse the “bigoted” representatives of the proletariat
and the “bigoted” representatives of the bourgeoisie and say
that they are the minority. You may curse them, talk loud
about the majority, about the broad universal character of
your labour democracy, about pure democracy. There is
no end to the number of words you can string together,
but they will only serve to obscure the fact that if the peasants do not follow the lead of the workers they will follow
the lead of the bourgeoisie. There is not, nor can there be,
a middle course. And those people who in this most difficult
period of transition in history, when the workers are hungry
and their industry is at a standstill, do not help the workers
to take grain at a fairer but not a “free” price, not at a capitalist, hucksters’ price, are carrying out the Kolchak programme no matter how much they may deny this to themselves, and no matter how sincerely they may be convinced
that they are carrying out their own programme conscientiously.
FROM MARX
TO MAO
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V
I will now deal with the last question on my list, that of
the defeat and victory of the revolution. Kautsky, whom
I mentioned to you as the chief representative of the old,
decayed socialism, does not understand the tasks of the
dictatorship of the proletariat. He reproached us, saying
that a decision taken by a majority might have ensured a
peaceful issue. A decision by a dictatorship is a decision
taken by military means. Hence, if you do not win by force
of arms you will be vanquished and annihilated, because
in civil war no prisoners are taken, it is a war of extermination. This is how terrified Kautsky tried to “terrify” us.
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Quite right. What you say is true. We confirm the correctness of your observation and there is nothing more
to be said. Civil war is more stern and cruel than any other
war. This has been the case throughout history since the
time of the civil wars in ancient Rome; wars between nations always ended in a deal between the propertied classes,
and only during civil war does the oppressed class exert
efforts to exterminate the oppressing class, to eliminate the
economic conditions of this class’s existence.
I ask you, what is the “revolutionary” worth who tries
to scare those who have started the revolution with the
prospect that it might suffer defeat? There has never been,
there is none, there will not be, nor can there be a revolution which did not stand some risk of defeat. A revolution
is a desperate struggle of classes that has reached the peak
of ferocity. The class struggle is inevitable. One must
either reject revolution altogether or accept the fact that the
struggle against the propertied classes will be sterner than
all other revolutions. Among socialists who are at all intelligent there was never any difference of opinion on this
point. A year ago, when I analysed the apostasy that lay
behind Kautsky’s statements I wrote the following. Even
if—this was in September last year—even if the imperialists were to overthrow the Bolshevik government tomorrow
we would not for a moment repent that we had taken power.
And not a single class-conscious worker who represents the
interests of the masses of the working people would repent,
or have any doubt that, in spite of it all, our revolution had
triumphed; the revolution triumphs if it brings to the forefront the advanced class which strikes effectively at exploitation. Under such circumstances, the revolution triumphs
even if it suffered defeat. This may sound like juggling with
words; but to prove the truth of it, let us take a concrete
example from history.
Take the great French Revolution. It is with good reason
that it is called a great revolution. It did so much for the
class that it served, for the bourgeoisie, that it left its
imprint on the entire nineteenth century, the century which
gave civilisation and culture to the whole of mankind.
The great French revolutionaries served the interests of
the bourgeoisie although they did not realise it for their
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V. I. L E N I N
vision was obscured by the words “liberty, equality and
fraternity”; in the nineteenth century, however, what they
had begun was continued, carried out piecemeal and finished
in all parts of the world.
In a matter of eighteen months our revolution has done
ever so much more for our class, the class we serve, the
proletariat, than the great French revolutionaries did.
They held out in their own country for two years, and
then perished under the blows of united European reaction,
under the blows of the united hordes of the whole world,
who crushed the French revolutionaries, reinstated the
legitimate monarch in France, the Romanov of the period,
reinstated the landowners, and for many decades later
crushed every revolutionary movement in France. Nevertheless, the great French Revolution triumphed.
Everybody who studies history seriously will admit that
although it was crushed, the French Revolution was
nevertheless triumphant, because it laid down for the whole
world such firm foundations of bourgeois democracy, of
bourgeois freedom, that they could never be uprooted.
In a matter of eighteen months our revolution has done
ever so much more for the proletariat, for the class which we
serve, for the goal towards which we are striving—the
overthrow of the rule of capital—than the French Revolution
did for its class. And that is why we say that even if we
take the hypothetically possible worst contingency, even if
tomorrow some lucky Kolchak were to exterminate the
Bolsheviks to the last man, the revolution would still be
invincible. And what we say is proved by the fact that the
new type of state organisation produced by this revolution
has achieved a moral victory among the working class all
over the world and is already receiving its support. When
the prominent French bourgeois revolutionaries perished in
the struggle they were isolated, they were not supported in
other countries. All the European states turned against
them, chief among them England, although it was an advanced country. After only eighteen months of Bolshevik
rule, our revolution succeeded in making the new state
organisation which it created, the Soviet organisation,
comprehensible, familiar and popular to the workers all
over the world, in making them regard it as their own.
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I have shown you that the dictatorship of the proletariat
is an inevitable, essential and absolutely indispensable
means of emerging from the capitalist system. Dictatorship
does not mean only force, although it is impossible without
force, but also a form of the organisation of labour superior
to the preceding form. That is why in my brief speech of
greeting at the opening of the Congress I emphasised this
fundamental, elementary and extremely simple task of
organisation; and that is why I am so strongly opposed to
all these intellectual fads and “proletarian cultures”. As
opposed to these fads I advocate the ABC of organisation.
Distribute grain and coal in such a way as to take care of
every pood—this is the object of proletarian discipline.
Proletarian discipline is not discipline maintained by the
lash, as it was under the rule of the serf-owners, or discipline
maintained by starvation, as it is under the rule of the
capitalists, but comradely discipline, the discipline of the
labour unions. If you solve this elementary and extremely
simple problem of organisation, we shall win, for then the
peasants—who vacillate between the workers and the capitalists, who cannot make up their minds whether to side
with the people of whom they are still suspicious, but can
not deny that these people are creating a more just organisation of production under which there will be no exploitation, and under which “freedom” of trade in grain will be a
crime against the state, who cannot make up their minds
whether to side with these people or with those who, as in
the good old days, promise freedom to trade which is alleged
to mean also freedom to work in any way one pleased—the
peasants, I say, will whole-heartedly side with us. When
the peasants see that the proletariat is organising its state
power in such a way as to maintain order—and the peasants
want this and demand it, and they are right in doing so,
although this desire for order is connected with much that
is confused and reactionary, and with many prejudices—
they, in the long run, after considerable vacillation, will
follow the lead of the workers. The peasants-cannot simply
and easily pass from the old society to the new overnight.
They are aware that the old society ensured “order” by ruining the working people and making slaves of them. But
they are not sure that the proletariat can guarantee order.
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More cannot be expected of these downtrodden, ignorant and
disunited peasants. They will not believe words and programmes. And they are quite right not to believe words,
for otherwise there would be no end to frauds of every kind.
They will believe only deeds, practical experience. Prove to
them that you, the united proletariat, the proletarian state,
the proletarian dictatorship, are able to distribute grain
and coal in such a way as to husband every pood, that you
are able to arrange matters so that every pood of surplus
grain and coal is distributed not by the profiteers, shall
not profit the heroes of Sukharevka, but shall be fairly
distributed, supplied to starving workers, even to sustain
them during periods of unemployment when the factories
and workshops are idle. Prove that you can do this. This is
the fundamental task of proletarian culture, of proletarian
organisation. Force can be used even if those who resort to
it have no economic roots, but in that case, history will
doom it to failure. But force can be applied with the backing
of the advanced class, relying on the loftier principles of the
socialist system, order and organisation. In that case, it may
suffer temporary failure, but in the long run it is invincible.
If the proletarian organisation proves to the peasants
that it can maintain proper order, that labour and bread are
fairly distributed and that care is being taken to husband
every pood of grain and coal, that we workers are able to
do this with the aid of our comradely, trade union discipline, that we resort to force in our struggle only to protect
the interests of labour, that we take grain from profiteers
and not from working people, that we want to reach an
understanding with the middle peasants, the working
peasants, and that we are ready to provide them with all we
can at present—when the peasants see all this, their alliance with the working class, their alliance with the proletariat, will be indestructible. And this is what we aim at.
But I have digressed somewhat from my subject and must
return to it. Today, in all countries, the word “Bolshevik”
and the word “Soviet” have ceased to be regarded as queer
terms, as they were only recently, like the word “Boxer”,
which we repeated without understanding what it meant.
The word “Bolshevik” and the word “Soviet” are now being
repeated in all the languages of the world. Every day the
FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS ON ADULT EDUCATION
375
class-conscious workers see that the bourgeoisie of all countries release a flood of lies about Soviet power in the millions
of copies of their newspapers, but they learn from this
vituperation. Recently I read some American newspapers.
I read the speech of a certain American parson who said that
the Bolsheviks were immoral, that they had nationalised
women, that they are robbers and plunderers. And I also
read the reply of the American Socialists. They are distributing at five cents a copy the Constitution of the Soviet
Republic of Russia, of this “dictatorship”, which does not
provide “equality of labour democracy”. They reply by
quoting a clause of the Constitution of these “usurpers”,
“robbers” and “tyrants” who disrupt the unity of labour
democracy. Incidentally, in welcoming Breshkovskaya on
the day she arrived in America, the leading capitalist newspaper in New York carried a headline in letters a yard long
stating: “Welcome, Granny!” The American Socialists
reprinted this and wrote: “She is in favour of political
democracy—is there anything surprising, American workers,
in the fact that the capitalists praise her?” She stands for
political democracy. Why should they praise her? Because
she is opposed to the Soviet Constitution. “Well,” said the
American Socialists, “here is a clause from the Constitution
of these robbers.” And they always quote the same clause
which says that those who exploit the labour of others
shall not have the right to elect or be elected. This clause
from our Constitution is known all over the world. And it
is because Soviet power frankly states that all must be subordinated to the dictatorship of the proletariat, that it is a
new type of state organisation—it is precisely for this reason that it has won the sympathies of the workers all over
the world. This new state organisation is being born in
travail because it is far more difficult, a million times more
difficult, to overcome our disruptive, petty-bourgeois
laxity than to suppress the tyrannical landowners or the
tyrannical capitalists, but the effort bears a million times
more fruit in creating the new organisation which knows no
exploitation. When proletarian organisation solves this
problem, socialism will triumph completely. And it is to
this that you must devote all your activities both in theschools and in the field of adult education. Notwithstanding
376
V. I. L E N I N
the extremely difficult conditions that prevail, and the fact
that the first socialist revolution in history is taking place
in a country with a very low level of culture, notwithstanding this, Soviet power has already won the recognition of
the workers of other countries. The phrase “dictatorship of
the proletariat” is a Latin phrase, and the working people
who heard it for the first time did not know what it meant,
and did not know how it could be instituted. Now this
Latin phrase has been translated into the modern languages
and we have shown that the dictatorship or the proletariat
is Soviet power, the government under which the workers
organise themselves and say that their organisation is superior to every other. No idler, no exploiter can belong to this
organisation. This organisation has but one object, and that
is, to overthrow capitalism. No false slogans, no fetishes
like “freedom”, and “equality”, will deceive us. We recognise no freedom, no equality, no labour democracy if it
conflicts with the cause of emancipating labour from the
yoke of capital. This is what we incorporated in the Soviet
Constitution, and we have already won for it the sympathies of the workers of all countries. They know that in spite
of the difficulty with which the new order is being born,
and in spite of the severe trials and even defeats which may
fall to the lot of some of the Soviet republics, no power on
earth can compel mankind to turn back. (Stormy applause.)
377
FOREWORD TO THE PUBLISHED SPEECH
“DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE
WITH SLOGANS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY”
The question I dealt with in my speech at the Congress
on adult education on May 19—the question of equality in
general and the equality of the worker and the peasant in
particular—is undoubtedly one of the most pressing and
“painful” questions of our time, and one that touches upon
the most deep-seated prejudices of the petty bourgeois, the
small proprietor, the petty commodity owner, every philistine and nine-tenths of the intelligentsia (including the
Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary intelligentsia).
Deny the equality of the worker and the peasant! How
terrible! Of course, this is something all the friends of the
capitalists, all of their hangers-on, and the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries first of all, are trying to seize
upon in order to “irritate” the peasant, to “stir him up”, to
incite him against the workers, against the Communists.
Such attempts are inevitable, but since they are founded on
lies, they are doomed to disgraceful failure.
Peasants are sober-minded, business-like, practical people.
Things must be explained to them in a practical light,
through simple, everyday examples. Is the peasant who has
a surplus of grain justified in hiding this surplus until prices
reach exorbitant, profiteering levels, without any regard for
the workers who are going hungry? Or is the state authority,
which is in the hands of the workers, justified in taking over
all surplus grain not at profiteering, huckstering, exorbitant prices, but at a fixed price set by the state?
That is the point at issue That is the whole thing in a
nutshell. To avoid facing up to this fact the various swind-
378
V. I. L E N I N
lers who, like the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries,
are working for the capitalists, for the return of undivided
power to them, are resorting to empty phrase-mongering
about “equality” and the “unity of labour democracy”.
The peasant must make his choice:
either freedom to trade in grain, which means speculation
in grain, freedom for the rich to grow richer, freedom for the
poor to be pauperised and to starve, return of undivided
power to the landowners and capitalists, dissolution of the
alliance of the peasants and the workers,
or delivery of grain surpluses at a fixed price to the state,
i.e., the united workers’ authority, which means an alliance between the peasants and the workers to get rid of the
bourgeoisie altogether and to eliminate any possibility
of their rule being restored.
Such is the choice.
The richer peasants, the kulaks, will choose the first alternative; they will want to try their luck in alliance with thecapitalists and landowners against the workers, against thepoor, but such peasants are a minority in Russia. The majority of the peasants will prefer an alliance with the workers
against the restoration of capitalist rule, against “freedom
for the rich to grow richer”, against “freedom for the poor to
starve”, against the deceitful camouflage of this accursed
capitalist “freedom” (freedom to starve to death) with flowery words about “equality” (the equality of the well-fed,
who have a surplus of grain, and the starving).
Our task is to fight the-cunning capitalist deception which
the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries practise
by means of resounding and flowery phrase-mongering about
“freedom” and “equality”.
Peasants! Unmask the wolves in sheep’s clothing who
praise “freedom”, “equality”, and “unity of labour democracy” and thereby actually champion the “freedom” of the
landowner to oppress the peasants, the “equality” of the
wealthy capitalist and the worker or the semi-starved
peasant, the “equality” of the well-fed man who hides his
surplus grain and the worker who is tormented by hunger and
unemployment because the country has been ruined by war.
Such wolves in sheep’s clothing are the working people’s
worst enemies; whether they call themselves Mensheviks,
FOREWORD TO “DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS”
379
Socialist-Revolutionaries, or non-party they are in reality
friends of the capitalists.
“The workers and peasants are equal as working people
but the well-fed grain profiteer is not the equal of the hungry
worker.” “We are fighting only to protect the interests of
labour, we take grain from profiteers, and not from
working people.” “We want to reach an understanding with
the middle peasants, the working peasants”—this is what I
said in my speech, this is the crux of the matter, this is the
real truth which is confused by loud-sounding phrases
about “equality”. Moreover, the vast majority of the peasants know that this is the truth, that the workers’ state
fights the profiteers and the rich while rendering every assistance to the working people and the poor, whereas both the
landowner’ state (under a monarchy) and the capitalist state
(under the freest and most democratic republic) have always
and everywhere, in all countries, helped the rich to rob the
working people, helped the speculators and the rich to grow
richer at the expense of the poor who become poorer.
This is a truth every peasant knows. And hence the greater their awareness, the sooner and more resolutely the
majority of the peasants will make their choice and declare
for alliance with the workers, for agreement with the workers’ government, against the landowner or capitalist state;
for Soviet power against the “Constituent Assembly” or the
“democratic republic”; for agreement with the Bolshevik
Communists, against any support for the capitalists,
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries!
* * *
To the “learned” gentlemen, to the democrats, socialists,
Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., we say:
you all pay lip-service to the “class struggle”, but actually
you close your eyes to it at the very time when it is growing
especially acute. And to do that means to side with capital,
with the bourgeoisie, against the working people.
He who recognises the class struggle must also recognise
that in a bourgeois republic, even in the freest and most
democratic bourgeois republic, “freedom” and “equality”
never were, and never could be, anything but an expression
380
V. I. L E N I N
of the equality and freedom of the commodity owners, the
equality and freedom of capital. Marx, in all of his writings
and especially in his Capital (which you all recognise in
words), made this clear thousands of times; he ridiculed the
abstract conception of “freedom and equality” and the vulgarisers, the Benthams who closed their eyes to the facts, and
he revealed the material roots of these abstractions.
Under the bourgeois system (i.e., as long as private property
in land and in the means of production persists) and under
bourgeois democracy, “freedom and equality” remain purely
formal, signifying in practice wage-slavery for the workers
(who are formally free and equal) and the undivided rule
of capital, the oppression of labour by capital. This is the
ABC of socialism, my learned gentlemen—and you have
forgotten it.
It follows from this ABC that during the proletarian revolution, when the class struggle has sharpened to the point
of civil war, only fools and traitors will seek to get away
with empty talk about “freedom”, “equality” and “unity of
labour democracy”. Actually everything depends on the
outcome of the struggle between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, and the intermediate, middle classes (including
the entire petty bourgeoisie, and hence the entire peasantry)
inevitably vacillate between the two camps.
The issue is this—which of the main forces, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, these intermediate sections will
join. There cannot be any third way; he who has not understood this from reading Marx’s Capital has understood
nothing in Marx, understood nothing in socialism, but is
in fact a philistine and a petty bourgeois who blindly follows
in the wake of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he who
has understood all this, will not allow himself to be deceived
by empty phrases about “freedom” and “equality”, but will
think and speak of practical things, that is, of the concrete
conditions for a rapprochement between the peasants and
the workers, their alliance against the capitalists, agreement
between them against the exploiters, the rich and the
profiteers.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class
struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship
of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat
FOREWORD TO “DECEPTION OF THE PEOPLE WITH SLOGANS”
381
that is victorious and has taken political power into its
hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not
destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased
to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a specific form of
class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the
working people, and the numerous non-proletarian strata
of the working people (petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors,
the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.), or the majority of
these strata, an alliance against capital, an alliance whose
aim is the complete overthrow of capital, complete suppression of the resistance offered by the bourgeoisie as well as
of attempts at restoration on its part, an alliance for the
final establishment and consolidation of socialism. It is a
specific kind of alliance which takes shape in a specific
situation, namely, amidst fierce civil war; it is an alliance
between firm supporters of socialism and its vacillating
allies, sometimes “neutrals” (in which case instead of an
agreement on struggle the alliance becomes an agreement on
neutrality); an alliance between economically, politically,
socially, and spiritually different classes. Only the corrupt
heroes of the corrupt Berne or yellow International, people
like Kautsky, Martov and Co., can evade examination of
the concrete forms, conditions, and tasks of this alliance by
resorting to platitudes about “freedom”, “equality”, and
“unity of labour democracy”, that is, by snatching fragments
from the ideological baggage of the era of commodity
economy.
N. Lenin
June 23, 1919
Published in the pamphlet:
N. Lenin, Two Speeches at
the First All -Russia Congress
on Adult Education,
Moscow, 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the pamphlet
382
TELEGRAM
TO THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE’S COMMISSARS
OF THE UKRAINE
Kiev
The Central Committee of the Party has discussed the
critical situation, the almost catastrophic situation, in the
Donets Basin and on the Manych, and proposes urgently
that the Kiev Council of Defence bend all efforts to accelerate and step up military aid to the Donets Basin, appoint
a number of the best comrades to exercise daily, unflagging
supervision over the fulfilment of these measures and, especially, carry out the immediate universal mobilisation of
the workers of Odessa, Ekaterinoslav, Nikolayev, Kharkov
and Sevastopol as reinforcements for the Southern Front;
lastly, make Podvoisky and Antonov personally responsible
for the Makhno group. Bear in mind that the defeat of the
revolution is inevitable unless Rostov is speedily captured.
On behalf of the C.C.,
Lenin, Stalin
Written May 8 , 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 4 2
Published according
to the manuscript
383
ADDENDUM TO THE DRAFT APPEAL
TO GERMAN WORKERS AND TO PEASANTS
WHO DO NOT EXPLOIT THE LABOUR OF OTHERS
Proletarians throughout the world are showing increasing
sympathy for Soviet power and there is a growing conviction
that only Soviet power, the power of the working people,
and not bourgeois parliamentarism, even in the most democratic republic, is capable of emancipating labour from the
yoke of capital, the nations from enmity and wars, and
mankind from the lawlessness of savage imperialism.
This conviction will break a road for itself, cost what it
may. In all countries the workers are becoming convinced
that they cannot save themselves from imperialism and wars
unless they break with the bourgeoisie, unless they defeat
them and overthrow their power, unless they ruthlessly
suppress the resistance of the exploiters. A beginning can be
made only in one’s own country. The Russian Soviet system
has met with the sympathy of the working masses throughout
the world, and everyone except the exploiters and their
lackeys now sees that Soviet power is the one hope of deliverance; this is because we Russian workers and peasants
have earned their confidence by having broken with the
bourgeoisie, overthrown them and suppressed their resistance, because we have driven out of the ranks of the working
people those leaders of traitor-socialism who, like the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, entered into a direct
and indirect alliance with the imperialist bourgeoisie, with
Kerensky, etc.
As long as the German workers tolerate a government of
such traitors to socialism, scoundrels and bourgeois lackeys
as the Scheidemanns and all their party there will be no
384
V. I. L E N I N
question of saving the German people; the German people
will remain the actual slaves of the bourgeoisie and will
be accomplices in their crimes—all the “socialist platitudes”
and all the “democratic” and “republican” rhetoric notwithstanding—in the same way as the “socialists” of the Entente
who are at present members of the Berne yellow International and who answer the atrocities of the Entente with
hypocritical well-wishing, kindly empty phrases or compliments paid to Wilson, etc., still remain traitors to socialism,
scoundrels and accomplices in the atrocities and crimes of
the French, British and American bourgeoisie.
It is inevitable that the German workers will break with
the traitors to socialism, the Scheidemanns and their party.
It is inevitable that they will break with the senility,
hesitancy, lack of ideology and character of the so-called
Independents who were dependent on the Scheidemanns
yesterday and who today depend on their fear of going over
resolutely to the side of Soviet power. The bourgeoisie may
slaughter hundreds of leaders and thousands of workers but
they are powerless to prevent this break-away.
Written May 1 1 , 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 4 9
in the journal Bolshevik No. 1
Published according to
the manuscript
385
TELEGRAM TO J. V. STALIN 62
Stalin,
Smolny,
Petrograd
May 20, 1919
Have received both notes. Have made detailed
arrangements with Sklyansky for unflagging supervision
over fulfilment. I hope that the universal mobilisation of
Petrograd men will be followed by their attack and not by
sitting in barracks.
Lenin
First published in 1 9 3 8
Published according to
the manuscript
386
SPEECH AT THE UNIVERSAL MILITARY
TRAINING FESTIVAL
MAY 25, 1919 63
BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT
Today we are celebrating the universal military training
of the working people.
Up to now, matters military have been an instrument of
the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists and
landowners. And to this day capitalists all over Europe are
holding out with the aid of the remnants of their old armies,
commanded by bourgeois officers. But this most reliable
prop of the bourgeoisie will collapse when the workers take
up the rifle, when they begin to form their own, vast
proletarian army, when they begin to train soldiers who
know what they are fighting for, who will defend the workers
and peasants, their factories and workshops, and prevent
the landowners and capitalists from coming back to power.
Today’s festival demonstrates the successes we have
achieved, the new force that is springing up from the
working class. This parade convinces us that Soviet power
has won the sympathies of the workers of all countries,
that the fraternal alliance of world Soviet republics will
take the place of world wars.
Permit me to introduce to you a Hungarian comrade,
Tibor Szamuely, Commissar for Military Affairs of the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Long live the Hungarian proletariat!
Long live the world communist revolution!
Izvestia No. 1 1 3 ,
May 2 7 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Izvestia text
387
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
Comrades, the news we have been receiving from
the Hungarian Soviet leaders fills us with enthusiasm and
pleasure. Soviet government has been in existence in Hungary for only a little over two months, yet as regards organisation the Hungarian proletariat already seems to have
excelled us. That is understandable, for in Hungary the
general cultural level of the population is higher; furthermore, the proportion of industrial workers to the total
population is immeasurably greater (in Budapest there are
three million of the eight million population of present-day
Hungary), and, lastly, in Hungary the transition to the
Soviet system, to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
has been incomparably easier and more peaceful.
This last circumstance is particularly important. The
majority of the European socialist leaders, of both the
social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends, have become so
much a prey to purely philistine prejudices, fostered by
decades of relatively “peaceful” capitalism and the bourgeoisparliamentary system, that they are unable to understand
that Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat
mean. The proletariat cannot perform its epoch-making
liberating mission unless it removes these leaders from
its path, unless it sweeps them out of its way. These
people believed, or half-believed, the bourgeois lies about
Soviet power in Russia and were unable to distinguish
the nature of the new, proletarian democracy—democracy
for the working people, socialist democracy, as embodied in
Soviet government—from bourgeois democracy, which
they slavishly worship and call “pure democracy” or
“democracy” in general.
388
V. I. L E N I N
These blind people, fettered by bourgeois prejudices,
failed to understand the epoch-making change from bourgeois to proletarian democracy, from bourgeois to proletarian
dictatorship. They confused certain specific features of
Russian Soviet government, of the history of its development in Russia, with Soviet government as an international
phenomenon.
The Hungarian proletarian revolution is helping even the
blind to see. The form of transition to the dictatorship
of the proletariat in Hungary is altogether different from
that in Russia—voluntary resignation of the bourgeois
government, instantaneous restoration of working-class
unity, socialist unity on a communist programme. The nature of Soviet power is now all the clearer; the only form of
rule which has the support of the working people and of
the proletariat at their head that is now possible anywhere
in the world is Soviet rule, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
This dictatorship presupposes the ruthlessly severe,
swift and resolute use of force to crush the resistance of the
exploiters, the capitalists, landowners and their underlings.
Whoever does not understand this is not a revolutionary,
and must be removed from the post of leader or adviser of
the proletariat.
But the essence of proletarian dictatorship is not in force
alone, or even mainly in force. Its chief feature is the organisation and discipline of the advanced contingent of the
working people, of their vanguard; of their sole leader, the
proletariat, whose object is to build socialism, abolish the
division of society into classes, make all members of society
working people, and remove the basis for all exploitation
of man by man. This object cannot be achieved at one stroke.
It requires a fairly long period of transition from capitalism to socialism, because the reorganisation of production
is a difficult matter, because radical changes in all spheres
of life need time, and because the enormous force of habit
of running things in a petty-bourgeois and bourgeois way can
only be overcome by a long and stubborn struggle. That is
why Marx spoke of an entire period of the dictatorship of
the proletariat as the period of transition from capitalism
to socialism. 64
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
389
Throughout the whole of this transition period, resistance
to the revolution will be offered both by the capitalists and
by their numerous myrmidons among the bourgeois intellectuals, who will resist consciously, and by the vast mass of
the working people, including the peasants, who are shackled
very much by petty-bourgeois habits and traditions, and who
all too often will resist unconsciously. Vacillations among
these groups are inevitable. As a working man the peasant
gravitates towards socialism, and prefers the dictatorship of
the workers to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. As a
seller of grain, the peasant gravitates towards the bourgeoisie, towards freedom of trade, i.e., back to the “habitual”,
old, “time-hallowed” capitalism.
What is needed to enable the proletariat to lead the peasants and the petty-bourgeois groups in general is the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of one class, its strength
of organisation and discipline, its centralised power based
on all the achievements of the culture, science and technology of capitalism, its proletarian affinity to the mentality
of every working man, its prestige with the disunited,
less developed working people in the countryside or in petty
industry, who are less firm in politics. Here phrase-mongering about “democracy” in general, about “unity” or the
“unity of labour democracy”, about the “equality” of all
“men of labour”, and so on and so forth—the phrase-mongering for which the now petty-bourgeois social-chauvinists
and Kautskyites have such a predilection—is of no use whatever. Phrase-mongering only throws dust in the eyes, blinds
the mind and strengthens the old stupidity, conservatism,
and routine of capitalism, the parliamentary system and
bourgeois democracy.
The abolition of classes requires a long, difficult and
stubborn class struggle, which, after the overthrow of capitalist rule, after the destruction of the bourgeois state, after
the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, does
not disappear (as the vulgar representatives of the old socialism and the old Social-Democracy imagine), but merely
changes its forms and in many respects becomes fiercer.
The proletariat, by means of a class struggle against the
resistance of the bourgeoisie, against the conservatism, routine, irresolution and vacillation of the petty bourgeoisie,
390
V. I. L E N I N
must uphold its power, strengthen its organising influence,
“neutralise” those groups which fear to leave the bourgeoisie
and which follow the proletariat too hesitantly, and consolidate the new discipline, the comradely discipline of the
working people, their firm bond with the proletariat, their
unity with the proletariat—that new discipline, that
new basis of social ties in place of the serf discipline of the
Middle Ages and the discipline of starvation, the discipline
of “free” wage-slavery under capitalism.
In order to abolish classes a period of the dictatorship of
one class is needed, the dictatorship of precisely that oppressed class which is capable not only of overthrowing the
exploiters, not only of ruthlessly crushing their resistance,
but also of breaking ideologically with the entire bourgeoisdemocratic outlook, with all the philistine phrase-mongering about liberty and equality in general (in reality, this
phrase-mongering implies, as Marx demonstrated long ago,
the “liberty and equality” of commodity owners, the “liberty
and equality” of the capitalist and the worker).
More, classes can be abolished only by the dictatorship
of that oppressed class which has been schooled, united,
trained and steeled by decades of the strike and political
struggle against capital—of that class alone which has assimilated all the urban, industrial, big-capitalist culture and
has the determination and ability to protect it and to preserve
and further develop all its achievements, and make them
available to all the people, to all the working people—of
that class alone which will be able to bear all the hardships,
trials, privations and great sacrifices which history inevitably imposes upon those who break with the past and
boldly hew a road for themselves to a new future—of that
class alone whose finest members are full of hatred and
contempt for everything petty-bourgeois and philistine,
for the qualities that flourish so profusely among the petty
bourgeoisie, the minor employees and the “intellectuals”—
of that class alone which “has been through the hardening
school of labour” and is able to inspire respect for its efficiency in every working person and every honest man.
Hungarian workers! Comrades! You have set the world
an even better example than Soviet Russia by your ability
to unite all socialists at one stroke on the platform of genuine
GREETINGS TO THE HUNGARIAN WORKERS
391
proletarian dictatorship. You are now faced with the most
gratifying and most difficult task of holding your own in
a rigorous war against the Entente. Be firm. Should vacillation manifest itself among the socialists who yesterday gave
their support to you, to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
or among the petty bourgeoisie, suppress it ruthlessly. In
war the coward’s legitimate fate is the bullet.
You are waging the only legitimate, just and truly revolutionary war, a war of the oppressed against the oppressors,
a war of the working people against the exploiters, a war
for the victory of socialism. All honest members of the
working class all over the world are on your side. Every
month brings the world proletarian revolution nearer.
Be firm! Victory will be yours!
May 27, 1919
Pravda No. 1 1 5 ,
May 2 9 , 1 9 1 9
Lenin
Published according
to the manuscript
392
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
In my article, “The Third International and Its Place in
History” (The Communist International 65 No. 1, May 1,
1919, p. 38 of the Russian edition) I pointed to one of the
outstanding symptoms of the ideological bankruptcy of
members of the old, putrid, Berne International. This
bankruptcy of the theoreticians of the reactionary socialism
which did not understand the dictatorship of the proletariat
found expression in the proposal made by the German
“independent” Social-Democrats to join, unite, combine
the bourgeois parliament with a form of Soviet power.
Kautsky, Hilferding, Otto Bauer and Co., the most
outstanding theoreticians of the old International, did not
realise that they were proposing to combine the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat!
The men who made names for themselves and won the sympathies of the workers by their advocacy of the class struggle
and by the proofs they advanced of its necessity, failed to
realise—at the crucial moment of the struggle for socialism—
that they were betraying the whole doctrine of the class
struggle, were renouncing it completely and actually deserting to the camp of the bourgeoisie by their attempt to
combine the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat. This sounds incredible, but it
is a fact.
By way of a rare exception, we have managed to receive
in Moscow a fairly large number of foreign newspapers,
although not of consecutive dates, so that we are now able
to retrace in greater detail—although not in complete detail,
of course—the history of the vacillation of those gentlemen,
the “Independents”, on the most important theoretical and
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
393
practical question of the present day. This is the question
of the relation between dictatorship (of the proletariat)
and democracy (bourgeois), or between Soviet power and
bourgeois parliamentarism.
In his pamphlet Die Diktatur des Proletariats (Wien,
1918) Herr Kautsky wrote that “the Soviet form of organisation is one of the most important phenomena of our time.
It promises to acquire decisive importance in the great decisive battles between capital and labour towards which we
are marching” (p. 33 of Kautsky’s pamphlet). And he added
that the Bolsheviks made a mistake in converting the
Soviets from “a combat organisation of one class” into “a state
organisation” and thereby “destroying democracy” (ibid.).
In my pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the
Renegade Kautsky (Petrograd and Moscow, 1918) I examined
this argument of Kautsky’s in detail and showed him to be
completely oblivious of the fundamental tenets of Marxism
on the state; for the state (every state, including the most
democratic republic) is nothing more nor less than a machine
in the hands of one class for the suppression of another. To
describe the Soviets as the combat organisation of a class,
and deny them the right to convert themselves into a “state
organisation”, is actually tantamount to renouncing the
ABC of socialism, proclaiming, or advocating, that the
bourgeois machine for the suppression of the proletariat (that
is, the bourgeois-democratic republic, the bourgeois state)
should remain inviolate; it is actual desertion to the camp
of the bourgeoisie.
The absurdity of Kautsky’s position is so glaring, the
pressure exerted by the masses of the workers who are
demanding Soviet power is so strong, that Kautsky and his
followers have been obliged to make an ignominious retreat;
they have got themselves into a muddle, for they lack
the courage honestly to admit their mistake.
On February 9, 1919, Freiheit (Freedom), the organ of
the “Independent” (of Marxism, but absolutely dependent
on petty-bourgeois democracy) Social-Democrats of Germany,
contained an article by Herr Hilferding. In this article the
author is already demanding that the Workers’ Councils
should be converted into a state organisation, but that
they should exist side by side with the bourgeois parlia-
394
V. I. L E N I N
ment, the National Assembly, and together with it. On
February 11, 1919, in an appeal to the German proletariat,
this slogan was accepted by the entire Independent Party
(and consequently, also by Herr Kautsky, who thereby
contradicted the statements he had made in the autumn of
1918).
This attempt to combine the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with the dictatorship of the proletariat is a complete
renunciation of Marxism and of socialism in general; forgotten are the experiences of the Russian Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries who from May 6, 1917 to October
25, 1917 (old style) made the “experiment” of combining the
Soviets as a “state organisation” with the bourgeois state and
failed ignominiously.
At the Party Congress of the Independents (held at the
beginning of March 1919) the entire Party accepted this
supremely sagacious proposal to combine Workers’ Councils
with bourgeois parliamentarism. But Freiheit No. 178,
of April 13, 1919 (Supplement) reported that the “Independent” group at the Second Congress of Workers’ Councils
had proposed the following resolution:
“The Second Congress of Workers’ Councils takes its stand on
the Workers’ Council system. Accordingly, the political and economic
structure of Germany shall be based on the Councils (Räteorganisation). The Councils are the elected representative bodies of the working population in all spheres of political and economic life.”
In addition to this, the same group submitted to the
Congress a draft of “directives” (Richtlinien) in which we
read the following:
“All political power is concentrated in the hands of the Congress
of Workers’ Councils. . . . ” “The right to elect and be elected to the
Councils shall be enjoyed by all, irrespective of sex, who perform
socially necessary and useful labour and do not exploit the labour of
others....”
We see, therefore, that the “independent” leaders have
turned out to be paltry philistines who are entirely dependent upon the philistine prejudices of the most backward
section of the proletariat. In the autumn of 1918, these
leaders, through their mouthpiece Kautsky, completely
rejected the idea of the Workers’ Councils being converted
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
395
into state organisations. In March 1919, following in the
wake of the masses of the workers, they surrender this
position. In April 1919, they throw the decision of their
Congress overboard and go over entirely to the position of the
Communists: “All Power to the Workers’ Councils.”
Leaders of this type are not worth very much. There is
no need to have leaders to serve as an index of the temper
of the most backward section of the proletariat which
marches in the rear and not ahead of the vanguard. And considering the spineless way in which they change their slogans,
such leaders are worthless. They cannot be trusted. They
will always be mere ballast, a minus quantity in the working-class movement.
The most “Left” of these leaders, a certain Herr Däumig,
argued as follows at the Party Congress (cf. Freiheit of
March 9):
“Däumig stated that nothing stands between him and the demand
of the Communists for ‘All Power to the Workers’ Councils’. But he
must protest against the putschism practised by the Communist Party
and against the Byzantinism they display towards the masses
instead of educating them. Putschist, isolated action cannot lead to
progress....”
By putschism the Germans mean what the old revolutionaries in Russia, some fifty years ago, called “flashes”,
“pyrotechnics”, i.e., small conspiracies, attempts at assassination, revolts, etc.
By accusing the Communists of being “putschists”, Herr
Däumig merely betrays his own “Byzantinism”, his own
servility to the philistine prejudices of the petty bourgeoisie.
The “Leftism” of a gentleman of this type, who repeats a
“fashionable” slogan because he fears the masses but does
not understand the mass revolutionary movement is not worth
a brass farthing.
A powerful wave of spontaneous strikes is sweeping
across Germany. The proletarian struggle is evidently growing in intensity to a degree unprecedented even in Russia
in 1905, when the strike movement rose to heights that had
never been reached before anywhere in the world. Anybody
who speaks of “pyrotechnics” in face of such a movement
proves that he is a hopeless vulgariser and a slave to
philistine prejudices.
396
V. I. L E N I N
Those philistine gentlemen headed by Däumig are
probably dreaming of a revolution (that is, if any idea of
revolution ever enters their heads) in which the masses
will all rise at once, fully organised.
Such revolutions never happen, nor can they happen.
Capitalism would not be capitalism if it did not keep millions
of working people, the vast majority of them, in a state of
oppression, wretchedness, want and ignorance. Capitalism
cannot collapse except as a result of a revolution which, in
the course of struggle, rouses masses who had not hitherto
been affected by the movement. Spontaneous outbreaks
become inevitable as the revolution matures. There has
never been a revolution in which this has not been the case,
nor can there be such a revolution.
Herr Däumig lies when he says that the Communists
pander to spontaneity; it is the same sort of lie that we
heard so often from the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. The Communists do not pander to spontaneity,
they are not in favour of isolated outbreaks. The Communists
urge the masses to take organised, integrated, united, opportune and mature action. The philistine slander of Däumig,
Kautsky and Co. cannot refute this fact.
But the philistines cannot understand that the Communists quite rightly regard it as their duty to be with the
fighting masses of the oppressed and not with the philistine heroes who stand aloof from the struggle, timidly
waiting to see how things turn out. Mistakes are inevitable
when the masses are fighting, but the Communists remain
with the masses, see these mistakes, explain them to the
masses, try to get them rectified, and strive perseveringly
for the victory of class-consciousness over spontaneity. It is
better to be with the fighting masses, who, in the course
of the struggle, gradually learn to rectify their mistakes, than
with the paltry intellectuals, philistines, and Kautskyites,
who hold aloof until “complete victory” is achieved—this
is the truth that the Däumigs cannot understand.
The worse for them. They have already gone down in the
history of the world proletarian revolution as cowardly
philistines, reactionary snivellers, yesterday the servants
of the Scheidemanns and today the advocates of “social
peace”, and it does not matter whether that advocacy is
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
397
concealed by the combination of the Constituent Assembly
with the Workers’ Councils or by profound condemnation
of “putschism”.
Herr Kautsky has broken the record for substituting
reactionary philistine snivelling for Marxism. He does
nothing else but bewail what is taking place, complain, weep,
express horror, and urge conciliation! All his life this
Knight of the Rueful Countenance has been writing about
the class struggle and about socialism; but when the class
struggle reached maximum intensity, reached the threshold
of socialism, our pundit lost his nerve, burst into tears, and
turned out to be a common or garden philistine. In issue
No. 98 of the organ of the Vienna traitors to socialism, of
the Austerlitzes, Renners and Bauers (Arbeiterzeitung
[Workers’ Gazette], April 9, 1919, Vienna, morning edition), Kautsky for the hundredth, if not the thousandth
time, sums up all his lamentations in the following words:
“. . . Economic thinking and economic understanding,” he wails,
“has been knocked out of the heads of all classes. . . . ” “The long war
has accustomed large sections of the proletariat to treat economic
conditions with absolute contempt and to place all their confidence
in the almighty power of violence....”
These are the two “favourite points” of this “extremely
learned” man! The “cult of violence” and the break-down of
industry—this is what has driven him to the usual, age-old,
typical whining and snivelling of the philistine instead of
analysing the real conditions of the class struggle. “We
expected”, he writes, “that the revolution would come as
the product of the proletarian class struggle. . . ”, “but the
revolution came as a consequence of the collapse of the
prevailing system in Russia and Germany in the war. . . . ”
In other words, this pundit “expected” a peaceful revolution! This is superb!
But Herr Kautsky has lost his nerve to such a degree that
he has forgotten what he himself wrote when he was a
Marxist, namely, that in all probability a war would provide
the occasion for revolution. Today, instead of calmly and
fearlessly investigating what changes must inevitably take
place in the form of the revolution as a consequence of the
war, our “theoretician” bewails the collapse of his “expectations”!
398
V. I. L E N I N
“. . . Large sections of the proletariat ignore economic
conditions!”
What utter piffle! How familiar the Menshevik press of
Kerensky days made this philistine refrain to us!
The economist Kautsky as forgotten that when a country
has been ruined by war and brought to the brink of disaster,
the main, the fundamental, the root “economic condition”
is to save the workers. If the working class is saved from death,
from starvation, saved from perishing, it will be possible
to restore disrupted production. But in order to save the
working class it is necessary to have the dictatorship of
the proletariat, which is the only means of preventing the
burdens and consequences of the war from being thrust
upon the shoulders of the workers.
The economist Kautsky has “forgotten” that the question
of how the burdens of defeat are to be distributed is determined by the class struggle, and that amidst the conditions
prevailing in an absolutely exhausted, ruined, starving and
dying country, the class struggle must inevitably assume
a different form. It is no longer a class struggle for a share
of the results of production; it is not a struggle to take
charge of production (for production is at a standstill, there
is no coal, the railways have been wrecked, the war has
knocked people out of their groove, the machines are worn
out, and so on and so forth) but a struggle to save the workers
from starvation. Only simpletons, even if very “learned”
ones, can “condemn”, under such circumstances, “consumers’, soldiers’” communism and superciliously remind the
workers of the importance of production.
The first and foremost task is to save the workers. The
bourgeoisie want to retain their privileges, to thrust all the
consequences of the war upon the workers, and this means
starving the workers to death.
The working class wants to save itself from starvation,
and for this it is necessary to smash the bourgeoisie, first
to ensure consumption, even the most meagre, otherwise
it will be impossible to drag out even an existence of semistarvation, it will be impossible to hold out until industry
can be restarted.
“Think of production!” says the well-fed bourgeoisie to
the starving and exhausted workers. And Kautsky, repeat-
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
399
ing the capitalists’ refrain in the guise of “economic science”,
becomes completely a lackey of the bourgeoisie.
But the workers say that the bourgeoisie, too, should
be put on a semi-starvation ration, so that the working
people might recuperate somewhat, so that the working
people may be saved from death. “Consumers’ communism”
is a means of saving the workers. The workers must be saved,
no matter at what sacrifice! Half a pound each for the capitalists, a pound each for the workers—this is the way out
of this period of starvation and ruin. Consumption by the
starving workers is the basis of, and the condition for, the
restoration of industry.
Clara Zetkin was quite right when she told Kautsky that
he was “slipping into bourgeois political economy. Production
is for man, and not man for production....”
Independent Herr Kautsky revealed the same dependence
upon petty-bourgeois prejudices when he bewailed the “cult
of violence”. When, as far back as 1914, the Bolsheviks
argued that the imperialist war would become civil war,
Herr Kautsky said nothing, but he remained in the same
party with David and Co. who denounced this forecast (and
slogan) as “madness”. Kautsky failed entirely to understand
that the imperialist war would inevitably be transformed
into civil war; and now he is blaming both combatants in
the civil war for his own lack of understanding! Is this
not a perfect example of reactionary philistine stupidity?
But while in 1914, failure to understand that the imperialist war must inevitably be transformed into civil war was
only philistine stupidity, today, in 1919, it is something
worse. It is treachery to the working class; for the civil
war in Russia, Finland, Latvia, Germany and Hungary, is a
fact. Kautsky admitted hundreds and hundreds of times
in his former writings that there are periods in history
when the class struggle is inevitably transformed into the
civil war. There is one now, but Kautsky is found in the
camp of the vacillating, cowardly, petty bourgeoisie.
“The spirit that inspires Spartacus is virtually the spirit of
Ludendorff.... Spartacus is not only encompassing the doom of its own
cause, but is also causing an intensification of the policy of violence
on the part of the Majority Socialists, Noske is the antipode of Spartacus....”
400
V. I. L E N I N
These words of Kautsky’s (quoted from his article in the
Vienna Arbeiterzeitung) are so infinitely stupid, base and
despicable that it is sufficient to point to them without
making any comment. The party which tolerates such leaders
must be rotten to the core. In the light of these words
of Kautsky’s, the Berne International, to which Herr Kautsky belongs, must be appraised on its merits as a yellow
International.
As a curiosity we shall also quote the argument advanced
by Herr Haase, in an article entitled “The International at
Amsterdam” (Freiheit, May 4, 1919). Herr Haase boasts of
having proposed a resolution on the colonial question which
states that “it is the function of an alliance of nations
organised on the lines proposed by the International . . .
before the advent of socialism . . . [please note this!] * . . . to
administer the colonies primarily in the interests of the
natives, and then in the interests of all the nations that
are united in the alliance of nations....”
A gem, is it not? According to the resolution proposed by
this pundit, before the advent of socialism, the colonies
will be administered not by the bourgeoisie, but by some sort
of benevolent, just, sentimental “alliance of nations”! Is
this not tantamount to whitewashing the most disgusting
capitalist hypocrisy? And these are the “Lefts” in the
Berne International....
So that the reader may make a more striking comparison
between the stupidity, baseness and despicableness of the
writings of Haase, Kautsky and Co. and the real situation
in Germany, I shall cite one other brief passage.
The well-known capitalist, Walther Rathenau, recently
wrote a book entitled, Der neue Staat (The New State).
It is dated March 24, 1919. Its value as a theoretical work
is nil. But as an observer, Walther Rathenau is compelled to
admit the following.
* Interpolations in square brackets in quoted passages have been
introduced by Lenin unless otherwise stated.—Ed.
THE HEROES OF THE BERNE INTERNATIONAL
401
“We are a nation of poets and thinkers, but in our auxiliary
occupations [im Nebenberuf] we are philistines....”
“Only the extreme monarchists and the Spartacists now have
ideals....”
“The unvarnished truth is that we are heading for dictatorship,
proletarian or pretorian...” (pp. 29, 52, 65).
Evidently this bourgeois considers himself as “independent” of the bourgeoisie as Kautsky and Haase imagine they
are of the petty bourgeoisie and of philistinism.
But Walther Rathenau towers head and shoulders above
Karl Kautsky, for the latter snivels, and like a coward
hides from the “unvarnished truth”, whereas the former
frankly admits it.
May 28, 1919
Published in June 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the manuscript
402
TELEGRAM TO J. V. STALIN
Stalin,
Smolny,
Petrograd
The circumstances of the whiteguard offensive against
Petrograd, taken in their totality, compel one to assume the
existence of organised treason behind our lines or, perhaps,
even at the front. This is the only explanation for the attack
with relatively small forces, the rapid advance and the
frequent blowing-up of bridges on the main lines leading to
Petrograd. It seems that the enemy is confident that we have
no organised armed forces of any importance to resist him
and that he can depend on help from the hinterland (the
fire in the artillery magazines in Novo-Sokolniki, the destruction of bridges, today’s news of the revolt at Oredezh).
Please pay greater attention to these circumstances and take
extraordinary measures to expose the plots.
Lenin
Written May 2 9 , 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 3 8
Published according to
the signed original
403
BEWARE OF SPIES!
Death to spies!
The whiteguards’ advance on Petrograd has made it perfectly clear that in the vicinity of the front line, in every
large town, the Whites have a wide organisation for espionage,
subversion, the blowing-up of bridges, the engineering
of revolts in the rear and the murder of Communists and
prominent members of workers’ organisations.
Every man should be on the watch.
Everywhere vigilance must be redoubled and a series of
measures evolved and carried out with the greatest strictness
to track down and capture spies and whiteguard conspirators.
Railwaymen and political workers in all military units
without exception must, in particular, redouble their
precautions.
All class-conscious workers and peasants must rise up
in defence of Soviet power and must fight the spies and
whiteguard traitors. Let every man be on the watch and in
regular contact, organised on military lines, with the committees of the Party, with the Extraordinary Commission and
with the most trusted and experienced comrades among
the Soviet officials.
V. Ulyanov (Lenin),
Chairman of the Council of Workers’
and Peasants’ Defence
F. Dzerzhinsky,
People’s Commissar of the Interior
Pravda No. 1 1 6 ,
May 3 1 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Pravda text
404
DRAFT C.C. DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
Whereas:
(1) The R.S.F.S.R., in alliance with the fraternal Soviet
Republics of the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and
Byelorussia, is compelled to wage a war of defence against
the common enemy, world imperialism and the Black-Hundred, whiteguard counter-revolution which imperialism
supports;
(2) an essential condition for success in that war is a
single command for all contingents of the Red Army, the
strictest centralisation of the command of all the forces
and resources of the socialist republics, especially of the
entire army supply apparatus and also of railway transport
which is an important material factor in the war, being
of primary importance both for the conduct of operations
and for the supply of munitions, equipment and provisions
to the Red Army,
the C.C. of the R.C.P. resolves:
(1) to recognise as absolutely essential for the duration
of the socialist war of defence the unification of everything
connected with supplies for the Red Army under the single
guidance of the Council of Defence and other central bodies
of the R.S.F.S.R.;
(2) to recognise as absolutely essential for the duration
of the socialist war of defence the unification of railway
transport and the management of the railway network throughout the entire territory of fraternal socialist republics
under the guidance and management of the People’s Commissariat of Railways of the R.S.F.S.R.;
(3) to recognise as incompatible with the interests of
defence the existence of separate bodies supplying the Red
DRAFT C.C. DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
405
Army and separate commissariats of railways in the fraternal Soviet republics, and to insist on their being changed
for the duration of the war into branches of the R.S.F.S.R.
bodies supplying the Red Army and of the People’s Commissariat of Railways of the R.S.F.S.R. that shall be under
the jurisdiction of and fully subordinated to the central
R.S.F.S.R. bodies supplying the Red Army and the People’s
Commissariat of Railways of the R.S.F.S.R.;
(4) to recognise as subject to annulment all decrees concerning Red Army supplies and railway transport or concerning the management of the railway network wherever
they contradict the orders and decrees of the R.S.F.S.R.
regulating supplies for the Red Army and the management
of railway transport and the railway network of the
R.S.F.S.R.
Lenin, Stalin
Written May 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 4 2
Published according
to a typewritten copy
406
TELEGRAM TO J. V. STALIN
Stalin,
Smolny,
Petrograd
If the situation on the Petrograd Front is favourable bend
all efforts for a speedy and decisive offensive, because troops
are greatly needed in other places.
Lenin
Written June 4 , 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 3 8
Published according to
the manuscript
407
DRAFT DECISION OF THE C.C. R.C.P.(B.)
ON THE PETROGRAD FRONT
The C.C. resolves:
(1) to recognise the priority importance of the Petrograd
Front and to be guided by this in allocating troops, etc.;
(2) to dispatch two-thirds of the division withdrawn from
the Eastern Front to Petrograd and one-third to the
Southern Front;
(3) to instruct the Organising Bureau to adopt the most
rigorous emergency measures to step up the removal of
Communists from work in the Soviets (central and local)
and their transfer to war work, especially in the hinterland
and directly behind the front line (combating desertion,
army supplies, stores, accelerating mobilisation, etc.);
(4) a similar instruction is given the Council of Defence
and the Council of People’s Commissars.
Written not later
than June 1 0 , 1 9 1 9
First two points published
in 1 9 4 1
First published in full
in the Fourth (Russian) Edition
of the Collected Works
Published according to
the manuscript
A GREAT BEGINNING
HEROISM OF THE WORKERS IN THE REAR.
“COMMUNIST SUBBOTNIKS”
Published in July 1 9 1 9
as a separate pamphlet in Moscow
Signed: N. Lenin
Published according to
the manuscript
GNINNIGEB TAERG A
.RAER EHT NI SREKROW EHT FO MSIOREH
” S K I N T O B B U S T S I N U M M O C“
ot gnidrocca dehsilbuP
tpircsunam eht
9 1 9 1 yluJ ni dehsilbuP
wocsoM ni telhpmap etarapes a sa
nineL .N :dengiS
First page of Lenin’s
manuscript
“A Great Beginning”.
June 28, 1919
Reduced
411
The press reports many instances of the heroism of the
Red Army men. In the fight against Kolchak, Denikin and
other forces of the landowners and capitalists, the workers
and peasants very often display miracles of bravery and
endurance, defending the gains of the socialist revolution.
The guerrilla spirit, weariness and indiscipline are being
overcome; it is a slow and difficult process, but it is making
headway in spite of everything. The heroism of the working
people making voluntary sacrifices for the victory of socialism—this is the foundation of the new, comradely discipline in the Red Army, the foundation on which that army
is regenerating, gaining strength and growing.
The heroism of the workers in the rear is no less worthy
of attention. In this connection, the communist subbotniks
organised by the workers on their own initiative are really
of enormous significance. Evidently, this is only a beginning,
but it is a beginning of exceptionally great importance. It
is the beginning of a revolution that is more difficult, more
tangible, more radical and more decisive than the overthrow
of the bourgeoisie, for it is a victory over our own conservatism, indiscipline, petty-bourgeois egoism, a victory over
the habits left as a heritage to the worker and peasant by
accursed capitalism. Only when this victory is consolidated
will the new social discipline, socialist discipline, be
created; then and only then will a reversion to capitalism
412
V. I. L E N I N
become impossible, will communism become really
invincible.
Pravda in its issue of May 17 published an article by
A. J. entitled: “Work in a Revolutionary Way. A Communist
Saturday”. This article is so important that we reproduce
it here in full.
“WORK IN A REVOLUTIONARY WAY
“A COMMUNIST SATURDAY
“The letter of the Russian Communist Party’s Central Committee
on working in a revolutionary way was a powerful stimulus to communist organisations and to Communists. The general wave of enthusiasm carried many communist railway workers to the front, but the
majority of them could not leave their responsible posts or find new
forms of working in a revolutionary way. Reports from the localities
about the tardiness with which the work of mobilisation was proceeding and the prevalence of red tape compelled the Moscow-Kazan
Railway district to turn its attention to the way the railway was
functioning. It turned out that, owing to the shortage of labour and
low productivity of labour, urgent orders and repairs to locomotives were being held up. At a general meeting of Communists and
sympathisers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway district held on May 7,
the question was raised of passing from words to deeds in helping to
achieve victory over Kolchak. The following resolution was
moved:
“‘In view of the grave domestic and foreign situation, Communists
and sympathisers, in order to gain the upper hand over the class enemy,
must spur themselves on again and deduct an extra hour from their
rest, i.e., lengthen their working day by one hour, accumulate these
extra hours and put in six extra hours of manual labour on Saturday
for the purpose of creating real values of immediate worth. Since
Communists must not grudge their health and life for the gains of the
revolution, this work should be performed without pay. Communist
Saturdays are to be introduced throughout the district and to continue until complete victory over Kolchak has been achieved.’
“After some hesitation, the resolution was adopted unanimously.
“On Saturday, May 10, at 6 p.m., the Communists and sympathisers turned up to work like soldiers, formed ranks, and without fuss
or bustle were taken by the foremen to the various jobs.
“The results of working in a revolutionary way are evident. The
accompanying table gives the place, of work and the character of
the work performed.
413
A GREAT BEGINNING
Loading materials for the
line, devices
for repairing
locomotives
and carriage
parts for Perovo, Murom,
Alatyr and
Syzran
Total
Moscow.
Main locomotive
shops
Per person
Character of
work
Number
Employed
Place of
work
Hours
worked
48
5
240
Worked performed
Loaded 7,500 poods
Unloaded 1,800
poods
21
3
63
FROM MARX
TO MAO
5
4
20
Moscow.
Passenger
depot
Complex
current repairs
to locomotives
26
5
130
Repairs done on
12 locomotives
Moscow.
Shunting
yards
Current repairs
to locomotives
24
6
144
2 locomotives completed and parts
to be repaired
dismantled on 4
Moscow.
Carriage
department
Current repairs
to passenger
carriages
12
6
72
2 third-class carriages
Perovo.
Main carriage workshop
Carriage repairs
and minor repairs on Saturday
and
Sunday
46
23
5
5
230
115
12 box carriages
and
two
flat
carriages
. . . .
205
—
1,014
4 locomotives and
16
carriages
turned out and
9,300 poods unloaded and loaded
NOT FOR
COMMERCIAL
DISTRIBUTION
Total
“The
total
value
of
the
work
performed
at
ordinary
rates of pay is five million rubles; calculated at overtime rates it
would be fifty per cent higher.
“The productivity of labour in loading wagons was 270 per cent
higher than that of regular workers, The productivity of labour on
other jobs was approximately the same.
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V. I. L E N I N
“Jobs (urgent) were done which had been held up for periods ranging from seven days to three months owing to the shortage of labour
and to red tape.
“The work was done in spite of the state of disrepair (easily remedied) of implements, as a result of which certain groups were held
up from thirty to forty minutes.
“The administration left in charge of the work could hardly keep
pace with the men in finding new jobs for them, and perhaps it was
only a slight exaggeration when an old foreman said that as much
work was done at this communist Saturday as would have been done
in a week by non-class-conscious and slack workers.
“In view of the fact that many non-Communists, sincere supporters
of the Soviet government, took part in the work, and that many more
are expected on future Saturdays, and also in view of the fact that
many other districts desire to follow the example of the communist
railway workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway, I shall deal in greater
detail with the organisational side of the matter as seen from reports
received from the localities.
“Of those taking part in the work some ten per cent were Communists permanently employed in the localities. The rest were persons
occupying responsible and elective posts, from the commissar of the
railway to commissars of individual enterprises, representatives of the
trade union, and employees of the head office and of the Commissariat
of Railways.
“The enthusiasm and team spirit displayed during work were
extraordinary. When the workers, clerks and head office employees,
without even an oath or argument, caught hold of the forty-pood wheel
tire of a passenger locomotive and, like industrious ants, rolled it
into place, one’s heart was filled with fervent joy at the sight of this
collective effort, and one’s conviction was strengthened that the victory of the working class was unshakable. The international bandits
will not crush the victorious workers; the internal saboteurs will not
live to see Kolchak.
“When the work was finished those present witnessed an unprecedented scene: a hundred Communists, weary, but with the light of
joy in their eyes, greeted their success with the solemn strains of the
Internationale. And it seemed as if the triumphant strains of the triumphant anthem would sweep over the walls through the whole of
working-class Moscow and that like the waves caused by a stone thrown
into a pool they would spread through the whole of working-class
Russia and shake up the weary and the slack.
“A. J.”
Appraising this remarkable “example worthy of emulation”, Comrade N. R. in an article in Pravda of May 20,
under that heading, wrote:
“Cases of Communists working like this are not rare. I know of
similar cases at an electric power station, and on various railways.
On the Nikolayevskaya Railway, the Communists worked overtime
several nights to lift a locomotive that had fallen into the turn-table
A GREAT BEGINNING
415
pit. In the winter, all the Communists and sympathisers on the Northern Railway worked several Sundays clearing the track of snow;
and the communist cells at many goods stations patrol the stations
at night to prevent stealing. But all this work was casual and unsystematic. The comrades on the Moscow-Kazan line are making this
work systematic and permanent, and this is new. They say in their
resolution, ‘until complete victory over Kolchak has been achieved’,
and therein lies the significance of their work. They are lengthening
the working day of every Communist and sympathiser by one hour
for the duration of the state of war; simultaneously, their productivity
of labour is exemplary.
“This example has called forth, and is bound to call forth, further
emulation. A general meeting of the Communists and sympathisers
on the Alexandrovskaya Railway, after discussing the military situation and the resolution adopted by the comrades on the Moscow-Kazan
Railway, resolved: (1) to introduce ‘subbotniks’ for the Communists
and sympathisers on the Alexandrovskaya Railway, the first subbotnik to take place on May 17; (2) to organise the Communists and sympathisers in exemplary, model teams which must show the workers
how to work and what can really be done with the present materials
and tools, and in the present food situation.
“The Moscow-Kazan comrades say that their example has made a
great impression and that they expect a large number of non-Party
workers to turn up next Saturday. At the time these lines are being
written the Communists have not yet started working overtime in the
Alexandrovskaya Railway workshops, but as soon as the rumour
spread that they were to do so the mass of non-Party workers stirred
themselves. ‘We did not know yesterday, otherwise we would have
worked as well!’ ‘I will certainly come next Saturday,’ can be heard
on all sides. The impression created by work of this sort is very great.
“The example set by the Moscow-Kazan comrades should be emulated by all the communist cells in the rear; not only the communist
cells at Moscow Junction, but the whole Party organisation in Russia.
In the rural districts too, the communist cells should in the first place
set to work to till the fields of Red Army men and thus help their
families.
“The comrades on the Moscow-Kazan line finished their first communist subbotnik by singing the Internationale. If the communist
organisations throughout Russia follow this example and consistently apply it, the Russian Soviet Republic will successfully weather
the coming severe months to the mighty strains of the Internationale
sung by all the working people of the Republic....
“To work, communist comrades!”
On May 23, 1919, Pravda reported the following:
“The first communist ‘subbotnik’ on the Alexandrovskaya Railway
took place on May 17. In accordance with the resolution adopted
by their general meeting, ninety-eight Communists and sympathisers worked five hours overtime without pay, receiving in return only
the right to purchase a second dinner, and, as manual labourers,
half a pound of bread to go with their dinner.”
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V. I. L E N I N
Although the work was poorly prepared and organised
the productivity of labour was nevertheless from two to three
times higher than usual.
Here are a few examples.
Five turners turned eighty spindles in four hours. The
productivity is 213 per cent of the usual level.
Twenty unskilled workers in four hours collected scrap
materials of a total weight of 600 poods, and seventy
laminated carriage springs, each weighing 32 poods, making
a total of 850 poods. Productivity, 300 per cent of the usual
level.
“The comrades explain this by the fact that ordinarily their work
is boring and tiresome, whereas here they worked with a will and with
enthusiasm. Now, however, they will be ashamed to turn out less
in regular working hours than they did at the communist subbotnik.”
“Now many non-Party workers say that they would like to take
part in the subbotniks. The locomotive crews volunteer to take locomotives from the ‘cemetery’, during a subbotnik, repair them and
set them going.
“It is reported that similar subbotniks are to be organised on the
Vyazma line.”
How the work is done at these communist subbotniks is
described by Comrade A. Dyachenko in an article in Pravda
of June 7, entitled “Notes of a Subbotnik Worker”. We
quote the main passages from this article.
“A comrade and I were very pleased to go and do our ‘bit’ in the
subbotnik arranged by a decision of the railway district committee
of the Party; for a time, for a few hours, I would give my head a rest
and my muscles a bit of exercise. . . . We were detailed off to the railway carpentry shop. We got there, found a number of our people,
exchanged greetings, engaged in banter for a bit, counted up our
forces and found that there were thirty of us. . . . And in front of
us lay a ‘monster’, a steam boiler weighing no less than six or seven
hundred poods; our job was to ‘shift’ it, i.e., move it over a distance
of a quarter or a third of a verst, to its base. We began to have our
doubts. . . . However, we started on the job. Some comrades placed
wooden rollers under the boiler, attached two ropes to it, and we began
to tug away. . . . The boiler gave way reluctantly, but at length it
budged. We were delighted. After all, there were so few of us. . . . For
nearly two weeks this boiler had resisted the efforts of thrice our number
of non-communist workers and nothing could make it budge until
we tackled it. . . . We worked for an hour, strenuously, rhythmically,
to the command of our ‘foreman’—‘one, two, three’, and the boiler
kept on rolling. Suddenly there was confusion, and a number of our
comrades went tumbling on to the ground in the funniest fashion.
The rope ‘let them down’. . . . A moment’s delay, and a thicker rope
A GREAT BEGINNING
417
was made fast. . . . Evening. It was getting dark, but we had yet to
negotiate a small hillock, and then our job would soon be done. Our
arms ached, our palms burned, we were hot and pulled for all we were
worth—and were making headway. The ‘management’ stood round
and somewhat shamed by our success, clutched at a rope. ‘Lend a
hand, it’s time you did!’ A Red Army man was watching our labours;
in his hands he held an accordion. What was he thinking? Who were
these people? Why should they work on Saturday when everybody
was at home? I solved his riddle and said to him: ‘Comrade, play us
a jolly tune. We are not raw hands, we are real Communists. Don’t
you see how fast the work is going under our hands? We are not lazy,
we are pulling for all we are worth!’ In response, the Red Army man
carefully put his accordion on the ground and hastened to grab at a
rope end....
“Suddenly Comrade U. struck up the workers’ song ‘Dubinushka’,
‘anglichanin mudrets’, he sang, in an excellent tenor voice and we
all joined in the refrain of this labour shanty: ‘Eh, dubinushka,
ukhnem, podyornem, podyornem....’
“We were unaccustomed to the work, our muscles were weary, our
shoulders, our backs ached . . . but the next day would be a free day,
our day of rest, and we would be able to get all the sleep we wanted.
The goal was near, and after a little hesitation our ‘monster’ rolled
almost right up to the base. ‘Put some boards under, raise it on the
base, and let the boiler do the work that has long been expected of
it.’ We went off in a crowd to the ‘club room’ of the local Party cell.
The room was brightly lit; the walls decorated with posters; rifles
stacked around the room. After lustily singing the Internationale
we enjoyed a glass of tea and ‘rum’, and even bread. This treat, given
us by the local comrades, was very welcome after our arduous toil.
We took a brotherly farewell of our comrades and lined up. The strains
of revolutionary songs echoed through the slumbering streets in
the silence of the night and our measured tread kept time with the
music. We sang ‘Comrades, the Bugles Are Sounding’, ‘Arise Ye
Starvelings from Your Slumbers’, songs of the International and of
labour.
“A week passed. Our arms and shoulders were back to normal and
we were going to another ‘subbotnik’, nine versts away this time, to
repair railway waggons. Our destination was Perovo. The comrades
climbed on the roof of an ‘American’ box waggon and sang the Internationale well and with gusto. The people on the train listened to
the singing, evidently in surprise. The wheels knocked a measured
beat, and those of us who failed to get on to the roof clung to the steps
pretending to be ‘devil-may-care’ passengers. The train pulled in.
We had reached our destination. We passed through a long yard and
were warmly greeted by the commissar, Comrade G.
“‘There is plenty of work, but few to do it! Only thirty of us, and
in six hours we have to do average repairs to a baker’s dozen of waggons! Here are twin-wheels already marked. We have not only empty
waggons, but also a filled cistern. . . . But that’s nothing, we’ll “make
a job of it”, comrades!’
“Work went with a swing. Five comrades and I were working with
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V. I. L E N I N
hoists. Under pressure of our shoulders and two hoists, and directed
by our ‘foreman’, these twin-wheels, weighing from sixty to seventy
poods apiece, skipped from one track to another in the liveliest possible manner. One pair disappeared, another rolled into place. At last
all were in their assigned places, and swiftly we shifted the old wornout junk into a shed. . . . One, two, three—and, raised by a revolving
iron hoist, they were disloged from the rails in a trice. Over there,
in the dark, we heard the rapid strokes of hammers; the comrades,
like worker bees, were busy on their ‘sick’ cars. Some were carpentering, others painting, still others were covering roofs, to the joy of the
comrade commissar and our own. The smiths also asked for our aid.
In a portable smithy a rod with a coupling hook was gleaming whitehot, it had been bent by careless shunting. It was laid on the anvil,
scattering white sparks, and, under the experienced direction of the
smith, our trusty hammers beat it back into its proper shape. Still
red-hot and spitting sparks, we rushed it on our shoulders to where it
had to go. We pushed it into its socket. A few hammer strokes and
it was fixed. We crawled under the waggon. The coupling system is
not as simple as it looks; there are all sorts of contraptions with rivets
and springs....
“Work was in full swing. Night was falling. The torches seemed
to burn brighter than before. Soon it would be time to knock off.
Some of the comrades were taking a ‘rest’ against some tires and ‘sipping’ hot tea. The May night was cool, and the new moon shone beautifully like a gleaming sickle in the sky. People were laughing and joking.
“‘Knock off, Comrade G., thirteen waggons are enough!’
“But Comrade G. was not satisfied.
“We finished our tea, broke into our songs of triumph, and
marched to the door....
The movement of “communist subbotniks” is not confined
to Moscow. Pravda of June 6 reported the following:
“The first communist subbotnik in Tver took place on May 31.
One hundred and twenty-eight Communists worked on the railway.
In three and a half hours they loaded and unloaded fourteen waggons,
repaired three locomotives, cut up ten sagenes of firewood and
performed other work. The productivity of labour of the skilled
communist workers was thirteen times above normal.”
Again, on June 8 we read in Pravda:
“COMMUNIST SUBBOTNIKS
“Saratov, June 5. In response to the appeal of their Moscow comrades, the communist railway workers here at a general Party meeting
resolved: to work five hours overtime on Saturdays without pay in
order to support the national economy.”
* * *
I have given the fullest and most detailed information
about the communist subbotniks because in this we undoubt-
DRAFT C.C. DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
419
edly observe one of the most important aspects of communist
construction, to which our press pays insufficient attention,
and which all of us have as yet failed properly to appreciate.
Less political fireworks and more attention to the simplest but living facts of communist construction, taken from
and tested by actual life—this is the slogan which all of us,
our writers, agitators, propagandists, organisers, etc.,
should repeat unceasingly.
It was natural and inevitable in the first period after the
proletarian revolution that we should be engaged primarily
on the main and fundamental task of overcoming the resistance of the bourgeoisie, of vanquishing the exploiters, of
crushing their conspiracy (like the “slave-owners’ conspiracy” to surrender Petrograd, in which all from the Black
Hundreds and Cadets to the Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries were involved 66 ). But simultaneously with
this task, another task comes to the forefront just as inevitably and ever more imperatively as time goes on, namely,
the more important task of positive communist construction,
the creation of new economic relations, of a new society.
As I have had occasion to point out more than once,
among other occasions in the speech I delivered at a session
of the Petrograd Soviet on March 12, the dictatorship of the
proletariat is not only the use of force against the exploiters, and not even mainly the use of force. The economic
foundation of this use of revolutionary force, the guarantee
of its effectiveness and success is the fact that the proletariat represents and creates a higher type of social organisation of labour compared with capitalism. This is what is
important, this is the source of the strength and the guarantee that the final triumph of communism is inevitable.
The feudal organisation of social labour rested on the
discipline of the bludgeon, while the working people, robbed
and tyrannised by a handful of landowners, were utterly
ignorant and downtrodden. The capitalist organisation of
social labour rested on the discipline of hunger, and, notwithstanding all the progress of bourgeois culture and
bourgeois democracy, the vast mass of the working people
in the most advanced, civilised and democratic republics
remained an ignorant and downtrodden mass of wage-slaves
or oppressed peasants, robbed and tyrannised by a handful
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V. I. L E N I N
of capitalists. The communist organisation of social labour,
the first step towards which is socialism, rests, and will do
so more and more as time goes on, on the free and conscious
discipline of the working people themselves who have thrown
off the yoke both of the landowners and capitalists.
This new discipline does not drop from the skies, nor is
it born from pious wishes; it grows out of the material
conditions of large-scale capitalist production, and out of
them alone. Without them it is impossible. And the repository, or the vehicle, of these material conditions is a
definite historical class, created, organised, united, trained,
educated and hardened by large-scale capitalism. This
class is the proletariat.
If we translate the Latin, scientific, historico-philosophical term “dictatorship of the proletariat” into simpler
language, it means just the following:
Only a definite class, namely, the urban workers and the
factory, industrial workers in general, is able to lead the
whole mass of the working and exploited people in the struggle
to throw off the yoke of capital, in actually carrying it
out, in the struggle to maintain and consolidate the victory,
in the work of creating the new, socialist social system and
in the entire struggle for the complete abolition of classes.
(Let us observe in parenthesis that the only scientific distinction between socialism and communism is that the first
term implies the first stage of the new society arising out of
capitalism, while the second implies the next and higher
stage.)
The mistake the “Berne” yellow International makes is
that its leaders accept the class struggle and the leading
role of the proletariat only in word and are afraid to think
it out to its logical conclusion. They are afraid of- that
inevitable conclusion which particularly terrifies the bourgeoisie, and which is absolutely unacceptable to them.
They are afraid to admit that the dictatorship of the proletariat is also a period of class struggle, which is inevitable
as long as classes have not been abolished, and which changes
in form, being particularly fierce and particularly peculiar
in the period immediately following the overthrow of capital. The proletariat does not cease the class struggle after
it has captured political power, but continues it until
DRAFT C.C. DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
421
classes are abolished—of course, under different circumstances, in different form and by different means.
And what does the “abolition of classes” mean? All those
who call themselves socialists recognise this as the ultimate
goal of socialism, but by no means all give thought to its
significance. Classes are large groups of people differing
from each other by the place they occupy in a historically
determined system of social production, by their relation
(in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means
of production, by their role in the social organisation of
labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share
of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of
acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can
appropriate the labour of another owing to the different
places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.
Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is
not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and
capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of ownership;
it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the
means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction
between town and country, as well as the distinction
between manual workers and brain workers. This requires
a very long period of time. In order to achieve this an enormous step forward must be taken in developing the productive forces; it is necessary to overcome the resistance
(frequently passive, which is particularly stubborn and
particularly difficult to overcome) of the numerous survivals
of small-scale production; it is necessary to overcome the
enormous force of habit and conservatism which are
connected with these survivals.
The assumption that all “working people” are equally
capable of doing this work would be on empty phrase, or
the illusion of an antediluvian, pre-Marxist socialist; for
this ability does not come of itself, but grows historically,
and grows only out of the material conditions of large-scale
capitalist production. This ability, at the beginning of the
road from capitalism to socialism, is possessed by the proletariat alone. It is capable of fulfilling the gigantic task
that confronts it, first, because it is the strongest and most
advanced class in civilised societies; secondly, because in
the most developed countries it constitutes the majority
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V. I. L E N I N
of the population, and thirdly, because in backward capitalist countries, like Russia, the majority of the population
consists of semi-proletarians, i.e., of people who regularly
live in a proletarian way part of the year, who regularly
earn a part of their means of subsistence as wage-workers
in capitalist enterprises.
Those who try to solve the problems involved in the
transition from capitalism to socialism on the basis of
general talk about liberty, equality, democracy in general,
equality of labour democracy, etc. (as Kautsky, Martov and
other heroes of the Berne yellow International do), thereby
only reveal their petty-bourgeois, philistine nature and
ideologically slavishly follow in the wake of the bourgeoisie.
The correct solution of this problem can be found only in a
concrete study of the specific relations between the specific
class which has conquered political power, namely, the
proletariat, and the whole non-proletarian, and also semiproletarian, mass of the working population—relations
which do not take shape in fantastically harmonious, “ideal”
conditions, but in the real conditions of the frantic resistance of the bourgeoisie which assumes many and diverse
forms.
The vast majority of the population—and all the more so
of the working population—of any capitalist country,
including Russia, have thousands of times experienced,
themselves and through their kith and kin, the oppression
of capital, the plunder and every sort of tyranny it perpetrates. The imperialist war, i.e., the slaughter of ten million
people in order to decide whether British or German capital
was to have supremacy in plundering the whole world, has
greatly intensified these ordeals, has increased and deepened
them, and has made the people realise their meaning. Hence
the inevitable sympathy displayed by the vast majority of
the population, particularly the working people, for the
proletariat, because it is with heroic courage and revolutionary ruthlessness throwing off the yoke of capital, overthrowing the exploiters, suppressing their resistance, and
shedding its blood to pave the road for the creation of the
new society, in which there will be no room for exploiters.
Great and inevitable as may be their petty-bourgeois
vacillations and their tendency to go back to bourgeois
DRAFT C.C. DIRECTIVES ON ARMY UNITY
423
“order”, under the “wing” of the bourgeoisie, the non-proletarian and semi-proletarian mass of the working population
cannot but recognise the moral and political authority of
the proletariat, who are not only overthrowing the exploiters and suppressing their resistance, but are building a new
and higher social bond, a social discipline, the discipline
of class-conscious and united working people, who know
no yoke and no authority except the authority of their own
unity, of their own, more class-conscious, bold, solid, revolutionary and steadfast vanguard.
In order to achieve victory, in order to build and consolidate socialism, the proletariat must fulfil a twofold or
dual task: first, it must, by its supreme heroism in the revolutionary struggle against capital, win over the entire mass
of the working and exploited people; it must win them over,
organise them and lead them in the struggle to overthrow
the bourgeoisie and utterly suppress their resistance.
Secondly, it must lead the whole mass of the working and
exploited people, as well as all the petty-bourgeois groups,
on to the road of new economic development, towards the
creation of a new social bond, a new labour discipline, a
new organisation of labour, which will combine the last
word in science and capitalist technology with the mass
association of class-conscious workers creating large-scale
socialist industry.
The second task is more difficult than the first, for it
cannot possibly be fulfilled by single acts of heroic fervour;
it requires the most prolonged, most persistent and most
difficult mass heroism in plain, everyday work. But this
task is more essential than the first, because, in the last
analysis, the deepest source of strength for victories over
the bourgeoisie and the sole guarantee of the durability and
permanence of these victories can only be a new and higher
mode of social production, the substitution of large-scale
socialist production for capitalist and petty-bourgeois
production.
* * *
“Communist subbotniks” are of such enormous historical
significance precisely because they demonstrate the conscious and voluntary initiative of the workers in developing
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V. I. L E N I N
the productivity of labour, in adopting a new labour discipline, in creating socialist conditions of economy and life.
J. Jacoby, one of the few, in fact it would be more correct
to say one of the exceptionally rare, German bourgeois
democrats who, after the lessons of 1870-71, went over not
to chauvinism or national-liberalism, but to socialism, once
said that the formation of a single trade union was of greater
historical importance than the battle of Sadowa. 67 This
is true. The battle of Sadowa decided the supremacy of one
of two bourgeois monarchies, the Austrian or the Prussian,
in creating a German national capitalist state. The formation of one trade union was a small step towards the world
victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. And we may
similarly say that the first communist subbotnik, organised
by the workers of the Moscow-Kazan Railway in Moscow on
May 10, 1919, was of greater historical significance than
any of the victories of Hindenburg, or of Foch and the
British, in the 1914-18 imperialist war. The victories of
the imperialists mean the slaughter of millions of workers
for the sake of the profits of the Anglo-American and French
multimillionaires, they are the atrocities of doomed capitalism, bloated with over-eating and rotting alive. The communist subbotnik organised by the workers of the MoscowKazan Railway is one of the cells of the new, socialist
society, which brings to all the peoples of the earth emancipation from the yoke of capital and from wars.
The bourgeois gentlemen and their hangers-on, including
the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who are
wont to regard themselves as the representatives of “public
opinion”, naturally jeer at the hopes of the Communists,
call those hopes “a baobab tree in a mignonette pot”, sneer at
the insignificance of the number of subbotniks compared
with the vast number of cases of thieving, idleness, lower
productivity, spoilage of raw materials and finished goods,
etc. Our reply to these gentlemen is that if the bourgeois
intellectuals had dedicated their knowledge to assisting
the working people instead of giving it to the Russian and
foreign capitalists in order to restore their power, the revolution would have proceeded more rapidly and more peacefully. But this is utopian, for the issue is decided by the
class struggle, and the majority of the intellectuals gravitate
A GREAT BEGINNING
425
towards the bourgeoisie. Not with the assistance of the intellectuals will the proletariat achieve victory, but in spite of
their opposition (at least in the majority of cases), removing
those of them who are incorrigibly bourgeois, reforming,
re-educating and subordinating the waverers, and gradually
winning ever larger sections of them to its side. Gloating
over the difficulties and setbacks of the revolution, sowing
panic, preaching a return to the past—these are all weapons
and methods of class struggle of the bourgeois intellectuals.
The proletariat will not allow itself to be deceived by them.
If we get down to brass tacks, however, has it ever happened in history that a new mode of production has taken
root immediately, without a long succession of setbacks,
blunders and relapses? Half a century after the abolition
of serfdom there were still quite a number of survivals of
serfdom in the Russian countryside. Half a century after
the abolition of slavery in America the position of the Negroes was still very often one of semi-slavery. The bourgeois
intellectuals, including the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, are true to themselves in serving capital and in
continuing to use absolutely false arguments—before the
proletarian revolution they accused us of being utopian;
after the revolution they demand that we wipe out all traces
of the past with fantastic rapidity!
We are not utopians, however, and we know the real
value of bourgeois “arguments”; we also know that for some
time after the revolution traces of the old ethics will inevitably predominate over the young shoots of the new. When
the new has just been born the old always remains stronger
than it for some time, this is always the case in nature and
in social life. Jeering at the feebleness of the young shoots
of the new order, cheap scepticism of the intellectuals and
the like—these are, essentially, methods of bourgeois class
struggle against the proletariat, a defence of capitalism
against socialism. We must carefully study the feeble new
shoots, we must devote the greatest attention to them, do
everything to promote their growth and “nurse” them.
Some of them will inevitably perish. We cannot vouch that
precisely the “communist subbotniks” will play a particularly important role. But that is not the point. The point
is to foster each and every shoot of the new; and life will
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V. I. L E N I N
select the most viable. If the Japanese scientist, in order
to help mankind vanquish syphilis, had the patience to
test six hundred and five preparations before he developed
a six hundred and sixth which met definite requirements,
then those who want to solve a more difficult problem,
namely, to vanquish capitalism, must have the perseverance
to try hundreds and thousands of new methods, means and
weapons of struggle in order to elaborate the most suitable
of them.
The “communist subbotniks” are so important because
they were initiated by workers who were by no means placed
in exceptionally good conditions, by workers of various
specialities, and some with no speciality at all, just unskilled
labourers, who are living under ordinary, i.e., exceedingly
hard, conditions. We all know very well the main cause of
the decline in the productivity of labour that is to be observed not only in Russia, but all over the world; it is ruin
and impoverishment, embitterment and weariness caused
by the imperialist war, sickness and malnutrition. The
latter is first in importance. Starvation—that is the cause.
And in order to do away with starvation, productivity of
labour must be raised in agriculture, in transport and in
industry. So, we get a sort of vicious circle: in order to raise
productivity of labour we must save ourselves from starvation, and in order to save ourselves from starvation we
must raise productivity of labour.
We know that in practice such contradictions are solved
by breaking the vicious circle, by bringing about a radical
change in the temper of the people, by the heroic initiative
of the individual groups which often plays a decisive role
against the background of such a radical change. The unskilled labourers and railway workers of Moscow (of course,
we have in mind the majority of them, and not a handful of
profiteers, officials and other whiteguards) are working
people who are living in desperately hard conditions. They
are constantly underfed, and now, before the new harvest
is gathered, with the general worsening of the food situation,
they are actually starving. And yet these starving workers,
surrounded by the malicious counter-revolutionary agitation of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and the SocialistRevolutionaries, are organising “communist subbotniks”,
A GREAT BEGINNING
427
working overtime without any pay, and achieving an enormous increase in the productivity of labour in spite of the fact
that they are weary, tormented, and exhausted by malnutrition. Is this not supreme heroism? Is this not the beginning
of a change of momentous significance?
In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most
important, the principal thing for the victory of the new
social system. Capitalism created a productivity of labour
unknown under serfdom. Capitalism can be utterly vanquished, and will be utterly vanquished by socialism creating
a new and much higher productivity of labour. This is a
very difficult matter and must take a long time; but it has
been started, and that is the main thing. If in starving
Moscow, in the summer of 1919, the starving workers who
had gone through four trying years of imperialist war and
another year and a half of still more trying civil war could
start this great work, how will things develop later when we
triumph in the civil war and win peace?
Communism is the higher productivity of labour—compared with that existing under capitalism—of voluntary,
class-conscious and united workers employing advanced
techniques. Communist subbotniks are extraordinarily
valuable as the actual beginning of communism; and this
is a very rare thing, because we are in a stage when “only
the first steps in the transition from capitalism to communism
are being taken” (as our Party Programme quite rightly
says).
Communism begins when the rank-and-file workers display
an enthusiastic concern that is undaunted by arduous toil
to increase the productivity of labour, husband every pood
of grain, coal, iron and other products, which do not accrue
to the workers personally or to their “close” kith and kin,
but to their “distant” kith and kin, i.e., to society as a whole,
to tens and hundreds of millions of people united first in
one socialist state, and then in a union of Soviet republics.
In Capital, Karl Marx ridicules the pompous and grandiloquent bourgeois-democratic great charter of liberty and
the rights of man, ridicules all this phrase-mongering about
liberty, equality and fraternity in general, which dazzles
the petty bourgeois and philistines of all countries, including the present despicable heroes of the despicable Berne
428
V. I. L E N I N
International. Marx contrasts these pompous declarations
of rights to the plain, modest, practical, simple manner in
which the question is presented by the proletariat—the
legislative enactment of a shorter working day is a typical
example of such treatment. 68 The aptness and profundity of
Marx’s observation become the clearer and more obvious to
us the more the content of the proletarian revolution unfolds.
The “formulas” of genuine communism differ from the
pompous, intricate, and solemn phraseology of the Kautskys, the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
their beloved “brethren” of Berne in that they reduce everything to the conditions of labour. Less chatter about “labour
democracy”, about “liberty, equality and fraternity”, about
“government by the people”, and all such stuff; the classconscious workers and peasants of our day see through
these pompous phrases of the bourgeois intellectual and
discern the trickery as easily as a person of ordinary common
sense and experience, when glancing at the irreproachably
“polished” features and immaculate appearance of the
“fain fellow, dontcher know”, immediately and unerringly
puts him down as “in all probability, a scoundrel”.
Fewer pompous phrases, more plain, everyday work,
concern for the pood of grain and the pood of coal! More
concern about providing this pood of grain and pood of coal
needed by the hungry workers and ragged and barefoot
peasants not by haggling, not in a capitalist manner, but by
the conscious, voluntary, boundlessly heroic labour of
plain working men like the unskilled labourers and railwaymen of the Moscow-Kazan line.
We must all admit that vestiges of the bourgeois-intellectual phrase-mongering approach to questions of the revolution are in evidence at every step, everywhere, even in
our own ranks. Our press, for example, does little to fight
these rotten survivals of the rotten, bourgeois-democratic
past; it does little to foster the simple, modest, ordinary
but viable shoots of genuine communism.
Take the position of women in this field, not a single
democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced
bourgeois republic, has done in decades so much as a hundredth part of what we did in our very first year in power.
We really razed to the ground the infamous laws placing
A GREAT BEGINNING
429
women in a position of inequality, restricting divorce and
surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a search for
their fathers, etc., laws numerous survivals of which, to
the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, are to be
found in all civilised countries. We have a thousand times
the right to be proud of what we have done in this field.
But the more thoroughly we have cleared the ground of the
lumber of the old, bourgeois laws and institutions, the clearer it is to us that we have only cleared the ground to build
on but are not yet building.
Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating woman, she
continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework
crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her
to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour
on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery. The real emancipation of
women, real communism, will begin only where and when
an all-out struggle begins (led by the proletariat wielding
the state power) against this petty housekeeping, or rather
when its wholesale transformation into a large-scale socialist
economy begins.
Do we in practice pay sufficient attention to this question,
which in theory every Communist considers indisputable?
Of course not. Do we take proper care of the shoots of communism which already exist in this sphere? Again the answer
is no. Public catering establishments, nurseries, kindergartens—here we have examples of these shoots, here we have
the simple, everyday means, involving nothing pompous,
grandiloquent or ceremonial, which can really emancipate
women, really lessen and abolish their inequality with men
as regards their role in social production and public life.
These means are not new, they (like all the material prerequisites for socialism) were created by large-scale capitalism. But under capitalism they remained, first, a rarity, and
secondly—which is particularly important—either profitmaking enterprises, with all the worst features of speculation,
profiteering, cheating and fraud, or “acrobatics of bourgeois
charity”, which the best workers rightly hated and despised.
There is no doubt that the number of these institutions
in our country has increased enormously and that they are
430
V. I. L E N I N
beginning to change in character. There is no doubt that
we have far more organising talent among the working and
peasant women than we are aware of, that we have far more
people than we know of who can organise practical work,
with the co-operation of large numbers of workers and of
still larger numbers of consumers, without that abundance
of talk, fuss, squabbling and chatter about plans, systems,
etc., with which our big-headed “intellectuals” or halfbaked “Communists” are “affected”. But we do not nurse
these shoots of the new as we should.
Look at the bourgeoisie. How very well they know how
to advertise what they need! See how millions of copies of
their newspapers extol what the capitalists regard as “model”
enterprises, and how “model” bourgeois institutions are made
an object of national pride! Our press does not take the
trouble, or hardly ever, to describe the best catering establishments or nurseries, in order, by daily insistence, to
get some of them turned into models of their kind. It does
not give them enough publicity, does not describe in detail
the saving in human labour, the conveniences for the consumer, the economy of products, the emancipation of women
from domestic slavery, the improvement in sanitary conditions, that can be achieved with exemplary communist work
and extended to the whole of society, to all working people.
Exemplary production, exemplary communist subbotniks, exemplary care and conscientiousness in procuring
and distributing every pood of grain, exemplary catering
establishments, exemplary cleanliness in such-and-such a
workers’ house, in such-and-such a block, should all receive
ten times more attention and care from our press, as well
as from every workers’ and peasants’ organisation, than they
receive now. All these are shoots of communism, and it is
our common and primary duty to nurse them. Difficult as
our food and production situation is, in the year and a half
of Bolshevik rule there has been undoubted progress all
along the line: grain procurements have increased from 30
million poods (from August 1,1917 to August 1, 1918) to
100 million poods (from August 1, 1918 to May 1, 1919);
vegetable gardening has expanded, the margin of unsown
land has diminished, railway transport has begun to improve
despite the enormous fuel difficulties, and so on. Against
A GREAT BEGINNING
431
this general background, and with the support of the proletarian state power, the shoots of communism will not wither; they will grow and blossom into complete communism.
* * *
We must give very great thought to the significance of
the “communist subbotniks”, in order that we may draw all
the very important practical lessons that follow from this
great beginning.
The first and main lesson is that this beginning must be
given every assistance. The word “commune” is being
handled much too freely. Any kind of enterprise started by
Communists or with their participation is very often at
once declared to be a “commune”, it being not infrequently
forgotten that this very honourable title must be won by prolonged and persistent effort, by practical achievement in
genuine communist development.
That is why, in my opinion, the decision that has matured
in the minds of the majority of the members of the Central
Executive Committee to repeal the decree of the Council
of People’s Commissars, as far as it pertains to the title
“consumers’ communes”, 69 is quite right. Let the title be
simpler—and, incidentally, the defects and shortcomings of
the initial stages of the new organisational work will not
be blamed on the “communes”, but (as in all fairness they
should be) on bad Communists. It would be a good thing to
eliminate the word “commune” from common use, to prohibit
every Tom, Dick and Harry from grabbing at it, or to
allow this title to be borne only by genuine communes, which
have really demonstrated in practice (and have proved by
the unanimous recognition of the whole of the surrounding
population) that they are capable of organising their work
in a communist manner. First show that you are capable of
working without remuneration in the interests of society,
in the interests of all the working people, show that you
are capable of “working in a revolutionary way”, that you
are capable of raising productivity of labour, of organising
the work in an exemplary manner, and then hold out your
hand for the honourable title “commune”!
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V. I. L E N I N
In this respect, the “communist subbotniks” are a most
valuable exception; for the unskilled labourers and railwaymen of the Moscow-Kazan Railway first demonstrated
by deeds that they are capable of working like Communists
and then adopted the title of “communist subbotniks” for
their undertaking. We must see to it and make sure that in
future anyone who calls his enterprise, institution or undertaking a commune without having proved this by hard work
and practical success in prolonged effort, by exemplary and
truly communist organisation, is mercilessly ridiculed and
pilloried as a charlatan or a windbag.
That great beginning, the “communist subbotniks”, must
also be utilised for another purpose, namely, to purge the
Party. In the early period following the revolution, when
the mass of “honest” and philistine-minded people was particularly timorous, and when the bourgeois intellectuals
to a man, including, of course, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, played the lackey to the bourgeoisie
and carried on sabotage, it was absolutely inevitable that
adventurers and other pernicious elements should hitch
themselves to the ruling party. There never has been, and
there never can be, a revolution without that. The whole
point is that the ruling party should be able, relying on a
sound and strong advanced class, to purge its ranks.
We started this work long ago. It must be continued
steadily and untiringly. The mobilisation of Communists for
the war helped us in this respect: the cowards and scoundrels
fled from the Party’s ranks. Good riddance! Such a reduction in the Party’s membership means an enormous increase
in its strength and weight. We must continue the purge, and
that new beginning, the “communist subbotniks”, must be
utilised for this purpose: members should be accepted into
the Party only after six months’, say, “trial”, or “probation”,
at “working in a revolutionary way”. A similar test should
be demanded of all members of the Party who joined after
October 25, 1917, and who have not proved by some special
work or service that they are absolutely reliable, loyal and
capable of being Communists.
The purging of the Party, through the steadily increasing
demands it makes in regard to working in a genuinely communist way, will improve the state apparatus and will
A GREAT BEGINNING
433
bring much nearer the final transition of the peasants to the
side of the revolutionary proletariat.
Incidentally, the “communist subbotniks” have thrown a
remarkably strong light on the class character of the state
apparatus under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The
Central Committee of the Party drafts a letter on “working
in a revolutionary way”. 70 The idea is suggested by the
Central Committee of a party with from 100,000 to 200,000
members (I assume that that is the number that will remain
after a thorough purging; at present the membership is
larger).
The idea is taken up by the workers organised in trade
unions. In Russia and the Ukraine they number about four
million. The overwhelming majority of them are for the
state power of the proletariat, for proletarian dictatorship.
Two hundred thousand and four million—such is the ratio
of the “gear-wheels”, if one may so express it. Then follow
the tens of millions of peasants, who are divided into three
main groups: the most numerous and the one standing closest
to the proletariat is that of the semi-proletarians or poor
peasants; then come the middle peasants, and lastly the
numerically very small group of kulaks or rural bourgeoisie.
As long as it is possible to trade in grain and to make
profit out of famine, the peasant will remain (and this will
for some time be inevitable under the dictatorship of the
proletariat) a semi-working man, a semi-profiteer. As a
profiteer he is hostile to us, hostile to the proletarian state;
he is inclined to agree with the bourgeoisie and their faithful
lackeys, up to and including the Menshevik Sher or the
Socialist-Revolutionary B. Chernenkov, who stand for
freedom to trade in grain. But as a working man, the peasant
is a friend of the proletarian state, a most loyal ally of the
worker in the struggle against the landowner and against
the capitalist. As working men, the peasants, the vast
mass of them, the peasant millions, support the state
“machine” which is headed by the one or two hundred thousand Communists of the proletarian vanguard, and which
consists of millions of organised proletarians.
A state more democratic, in the true sense of the word,
one more closely connected with the working and exploited
people, has never yet existed.
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V. I. L E N I N
It is precisely proletarian work such as that put into
“communist subbotniks” that will win the complete respect
and love of peasants for the proletarian state. Such work
and such work alone will completely convince the peasant
that we are right, that communism is right, and make him
our devoted ally, and, hence, will lead to the complete
elimination of our food difficulties, to the complete victory
of communism over capitalism in the matter of the production and distribution of grain, to the unqualified consolidation of communism.
June 28, 1919
435
TELEGRAM TO J. V. STALIN
Smolny, Petrograd
Ekaterinoslav captured. Desperate munitions situation
in the South. Since you have received three million cartridges and the stocks at Vidlitsa 71 you must exercise the
greatest economy of cartridges and other munitions.
Lenin
Written June 3 0 , 1 9 1 9
First published in 1 9 4 2
Published according to
the telegraph form
436
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN!
LETTER OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE
OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTY (BOLSHEVIKS)
TO PARTY ORGANISATIONS
Comrades,
This is one of the most critical, probably even the most
critical moment for the socialist revolution. Those who
defend the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, in
Russia and abroad (primarily in Britain and France) are
making a desperate effort to restore the power of those who
seize the results of the people’s labour, the landowners and
exploiters of Russia, in order to bolster up their power, which
is waning all over the world. The British and French capitalists have failed in their plan to conquer the Ukraine
using their own troops; they have failed in their support
of Kolchak in Siberia; the Red Army, heroically advancing
in the Urals with the help of the Urals workers who are rising to a man, is nearing Siberia to liberate it from the
incredible tyranny and brutality of the capitalists who
rule there. Lastly, the British and French imperialists have
failed in their plan to seize Petrograd by means of a counterrevolutionary conspiracy with the participation of Russian
monarchists, Cadets, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries (not excluding even Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).
The foreign capitalists are now making a desperate
effort to restore the yoke of capital by means of an onslaught
by Denikin, whom they have supplied with officers, shells,
tanks, etc., etc., as they once did Kolchak.
All the forces of the workers and peasants, all the forces
of the Soviet Republic, must be harnessed to repulse Denikin’s onslaught and to defeat him, without checking the
Red Army’s victorious advance into the Urals and Siberia.
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN!
437
That is the
MAIN TASK OF THE MOMENT
All Communists first and foremost, all sympathisers
with them, all honest workers and peasants, all Soviet
officials must pull themselves together like soldiers and concentrate to the maximum their work, their efforts and their
concern directly on the tasks of the war, on the speedy
repulse of Denikin’s attack, curtailing and rearranging all
their other activities to allow for this task.
The Soviet Republic is besieged by the enemy. It must
become a single military camp, not in word but in deed.
All the work of all institutions must be adapted to the
war and placed on a military footing!
Collegiate methods are essential for the conduct of the
affairs of the workers’ and peasants’ state. But any expansion
of these methods, any distortion of them resulting in red
tape and irresponsibility, any conversion of collegiate
bodies into talk-shops is a supreme evil, an evil which must
be halted at all costs as quickly as possible and by whatever
the means.
Collegiate methods must not exceed an absolutely indispensable minimum in respect both to the number of members in the committees and to the efficient conduct of work;
“speechifying” must be prohibited, opinions must be exchanged as rapidly as possible and confined to information
and precisely formulated practical proposals.
Whenever there is the slightest possibility, such methods
must be reduced to the briefest discussion of only the most
important questions in the narrowest collegiate bodies,
while the practical management of institutions, enterprises,
undertakings or tasks should be entrusted to one comrade,
known for his firmness, resolution, boldness and ability to
conduct practical affairs and who enjoys the greatest confidence. At any rate, and under all circumstances without
exception, collegiate management must be accompanied
by the precisest definition of the personal responsibility
of every individual for a precisely defined job. To refer to
collegiate methods as an excuse for irresponsibility is a most
dangerous evil, threatening all who have not had very extensive experience in efficient collective work; in the army
438
V. I. L E N I N
it all too often leads to inevitable disaster, chaos, panic,
division of authority and defeat.
A no less dangerous evil is organisational fuss or organisational fantasies. The reorganisation of work necessitated by
the war must under no circumstances lead to the reorganisation of institutions, still less to the hasty formation of new
institutions. That is absolutely impermissible and would
only lead to chaos. The reorganisation of work should consist in suspending for a time institutions which are not
absolutely essential, or in reducing their size to a certain
extent. But all war work must be conducted entirely and
exclusively through already existing military institutions,
by improving, strengthening, expanding and supporting
them. The creation of special “defence committees” or “revcoms” (revolutionary or revolutionary military committees)
is permissible, first, only by way of exception, secondly,
only with the approval of the military authority concerned
or the superior Soviet authority, and, thirdly, only provided this last condition is complied with.
THE TRUTH ABOUT KOLCHAK AND DENIKIN
MUST BE EXPLAINED TO THE PEOPLE
Kolchak and Denikin are the chief, and the only serious,
enemies of the Soviet Republic. If it were not for the help
they are getting from the Entente (Britain, France, America) they would have collapsed long ago. It is only the help
of the Entente which makes them strong. Nevertheless, they
are still forced to deceive the people, to pretend from time
to time that they support “democracy”, a “constituent
assembly”, “government by the people”, etc. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries are only too willing to
be duped.
The truth about Kolchak (and his double, Denikin) has
now been revealed in full. The shooting of tens of thousands
of workers. The shooting even of Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries. The flogging of peasants of entire districts.
The public flogging of women. The absolutely unbridled
power of the officers, the sons of landowners. Endless looting.
Such is the truth about Kolchak and Denikin. Increasing
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN!
439
numbers of people even among the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who themselves betrayed the workers
and sided with Kolchak and Denikin, are forced to admit
this truth.
All our agitation and propaganda must serve to inform
the people of the truth. It must be explained that the alternative is either Kolchak and Denikin or Soviet power,
the power (dictatorship) of the workers. There is no middle
course; there can be no middle course. Particular use must
be made of the testimony of non-Bolshevik eyewitnesses,
of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and non-party
people who have been in the areas overrun by Kolchak or
Denikin. Let every worker and peasant know what the issue
of the struggle is, what awaits him in the event of a victory
for Kolchak or Denikin.
WORK AMONG MEN CALLED UP FOR SERVICE
One of our chief concerns must now be work among those
liable to mobilisation, in aid of mobilisation, and among
those already mobilised. Wherever mobilised men are concentrated, or where there are garrisons, and especially training depots, etc., every single Communist and sympathiser
must be brought into action. They must all without exception unite and work, some daily, others, say, four or eight
hours per week, in aid of mobilisation and among mobilised
men, among the soldiers of the local garrison; it must be
done in a properly organised manner, of course, each person
being assigned appropriate work by the local Party organisation and the military authorities.
Non-party people or members of parties other than the
Communist Party are naturally not in a position to carry on
ideological work against Denikin or Kolchak. But to release
them for that reason from all work would be impermissible.
Every means must be sought that would compel the whole
population (and the wealthier sections, both in town and
country, in the first place) to contribute their share, in one
form or another, to help mobilisation or the mobilised.
Measures to further the quickest and most effective
training of the mobilised should form a special category
of aid. The Soviet government is calling up all ex-officers,
440
V. I. L E N I N
non-commissioned officers, etc. The Communist Party, as
well as all sympathisers and all workers, must assist the
workers’ and peasants’ state, first, by helping to round up
all ex-officers, non-commissioned officers, etc., who do not
report for service, and, secondly, by organising, under the
control of the Party organisation or attached to it, groups
of those who have had theoretical or practical (e.g., in
the imperialist war) military training and who are capable
of doing their share.
WORK AMONG DESERTERS
An obvious change for the better has latterly taken place
in the fight against desertion. In a number of gubernias
deserters have begun to return to the army en masse; it is
no exaggeration to say that deserters are flocking to the
Red Army. The reasons are, first, that Party comrades are
working more efficiently and systematically, and, secondly,
the peasants’ growing realisation that Kolchak and Denikin
mean the restoration of a regime which is worse than the
tsarist, the restoration of slavery for the workers and
peasants, and of floggings, robbery and insults on the part
of the officers and scions of the nobility.
We must therefore everywhere lay special stress on the
work among deserters to bring them back into the army, and
must spare no effort in this work. That is one of the primary
and urgent tasks of the day.
Incidentally, the fact that deserters can be influenced by
persuasion and that the persuasion can be effective shows
that the workers’ state has a special attitude towards the
peasants, and in this it differs from the landowner or
capitalist state The rule of the bludgeon or the rule of hunger—that is what constitutes the sole source of discipline
of the latter two forms of state. A different source of discipline is possible in the case of the workers’ state, or the dictatorship of the proletariat—that of persuasion of the peasants
by the workers, a comradely alliance between them. When
you hear the accounts of eyewitnesses that in such-and-such
a gubernia (Ryazan, for instance) thousands upon thousands
of deserters are returning voluntarily, that the appeal at
meetings to “comrades deserters” sometimes has a success
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN!
441
which beggars all description, you begin to realise how
much untapped strength there is in this comradely alliance
between workers and peasants. The peasant has his
prejudice, which makes him inclined to support the capitalist, the Socialist-Revolutionary, and “freedom to trade”,
but he also has his sound judgement, which is impelling him
more and more towards an alliance with the workers.
DIRECT AID TO THE ARMY
What our army needs most is supplies—clothing, footwear, arms, shells. With the country impoverished as it
is, an immense effort has to be made to satisfy the army’s
needs, and it is only the assistance which the capitalist
robbers of Britain, France and America are so lavishly
rendering Kolchak and Denikin that saves them from
inevitable disaster due to shortage of supplies.
But impoverished though Russia is, she still has endless
resources which we have not yet utilised, and often have
shown no ability to utilise. There are still many undisclosed
or uninspected military stores, plenty of production potentialities which are being overlooked, partly owing to the
deliberate sabotage of officials, partly owing to red tape,
bureaucracy, inefficiency and incompetence—all those “sins
of the past” which so inevitably and so drastically weigh
upon every revolution which makes a “leap” into a new
social order.
Direct aid to the army in this respect is particularly
important. The institutions in charge of it are particularly
in need of “fresh blood”, of outside assistance, of the voluntary, vigorous and heroic initiative of the workers and
peasants in the localities.
We must appeal as widely as possible to the initiative
of all class-conscious workers and peasants, and of all Soviet officials; we must test in different localities and in
different fields of work different forms of assistance to the
army in this respect. “Work in a revolutionary way” is far
less in evidence here than in other spheres, yet “work in a
revolutionary way” is needed here far more.
The collection of arms from the population is an integral
part of this work. It is natural that plenty of arms should
442
V. I. L E N I N
have been hidden by the peasants and the bourgeoisie in a
country which has been through four years of imperialist
war followed by two people’s revolutions—it was inevitable
that this should happen. But we must combat it with all
our might now, in face of Denikin’s menacing onslaught
whoever conceals or helps to conceal arms is guilty of a
grave crime against the workers and peasants and deserves to
be shot, for he is responsible for the death of thousands upon
thousands of the finest Red Army men, who not infrequently
perish only because of a shortage of arms at the fronts.
The Petrograd comrades succeeded in unearthing thousands and thousands of rifles when they conducted mass
searches in a strictly organised way. The rest of Russia
must not lag behind Petrograd and must at all costs overtake and outstrip it.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the largest
numbers of rifles are hidden by the peasants, and often
without the least evil intention, but solely from an ingrained
distrust of any “state”, etc. If we have been able to do much,
very much (in the best gubernias) by means of persuasion,
skilful agitation and a proper approach to get deserters to
return to the Red Army voluntarily, there can be no doubt
that just as much, if not more, can be done, and should be
done, to secure a voluntary return of arms.
Workers and peasants, look for concealed rifles and turn
them over to the army! By doing so you will save yourselves from being massacred, shot, flogged wholesale and
robbed by Kolchak and Denikin!
CURTAILMENT OF WORK NOT FOR THE WAR
To carry out even a part of the work briefly outlined above
we shall need more and more workers, drawn, moreover,
from the ranks of the most reliable, devoted and energetic
Communists. But where are they to come from, bearing in
mind the universal complaints about the dearth of such
workers and the over-fatigue they are suffering from?
There can be no doubt that these complaints are largely
justified. If anyone were to gauge exactly how thin is that
stratum of advanced workers and Communists who with
the support and sympathy of the worker and peasant masses
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443
have administered Russia in these last twenty months, it
would seem truly incredible. Yet we administered with
signal success, building socialism, overcoming unparalleled
difficulties, and vanquishing enemies, directly or indirectly
connected with the bourgeoisie, that raised their heads
everywhere. We have already vanquished all enemies except
one—the Entente, the all-powerful imperialist bourgeoisie of
Britain, France and America. And we have broken one of
the arms of this enemy too—Kolchak. We are only
threatened by his other arm—Denikin.
Fresh labour-power for the administration of the state
and to carry out the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat are rapidly emerging in the shape of the worker and
peasant youth who are most earnestly, zealously and fervidly learning, digesting the new impressions of the new
order, throwing off the husk of old, capitalist and bourgeoisdemocratic prejudices, and moulding themselves into even
firmer Communists than the older generation.
But however rapidly this new stratum may be emerging,
however rapidly it may be learning and maturing in the
fire of the Civil War and the frantic resistance of the bourgeoisie, all the same it cannot, in the next few months,
supply us with a trained staff for the administration of the
state. Yet it is precisely the next few months, the summer
and autumn of 1919, that count, for it is essential to decide
the struggle against Denikin, and it must be done
immediately.
In order to obtain a large number of well-trained workers
to strengthen the war effort we must reduce in size a whole
number of branches and institutions, not doing war work,
or, rather, those not directly connected with the war,
but doing Soviet work; we must reorganise on these lines
(i.e., on the lines of reduction) all institutions and enterprises which are not absolutely indispensable.
Take, as a case in point, the Scientific and Technological
Department of the Supreme Economic Council. This is a
highly valuable institution, one indispensable for the building of full-scale socialism and to account for and distribute
all our scientific and technological forces properly. But
is such an institution absolutely indispensable? Of course
not. To assign to it people who could and should be immedi-
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V. I. L E N I N
ately employed in urgent and absolutely indispensable communist work in the army or directly for the army would, at
the present juncture, be a downright crime.
There are quite a number of such institutions and departments of institutions in the centre and in the localities. In
our efforts to achieve socialism in full we had to begin to
set up such institutions immediately. But we would be
fools or criminals, if, in the face of Denikin’s formidable
attack, we were unable to reform our ranks in such a way as
to suspend or reduce everything that is not absolutely
indispensable.
We must not give way to panic or succumb to the organisational urge and must not reorganise any institutions nor
close them down altogether nor—which is particularly
harmful when being done in haste—must we begin to build
new institutions. What we must do is to suspend for three,
four or five months all institutions or departments of institutions, both in the centre and in the localities, which are
not absolutely indispensable, or, if it is not possible to
suspend them altogether, reduce them for the same (approximately) period, reduce them to the greatest possible
extent, in other words, reduce the work to an absolutely
indispensable minimum.
Inasmuch as our main purpose is to secure at once a
large number of well-trained, experienced, devoted and
tested Communists or socialist sympathisers for military
work, we can incur the risk of temporarily leaving many of
the heavily curtailed institutions (or departments of institutions) without a single Communist, of placing them exclusively in the hands of bourgeois executives. That is not a
big risk, for it is only institutions which are not absolutely
indispensable that are involved, and while there will certainly be a loss from the weakening of their (semi-suspended)
activities, it will not be a great loss, and one which at any
rate will not be fatal to us. Whereas insufficient energy
in strengthening war work, and strengthening it immediately
and considerably, may prove fatal to us. This must be clearly understood and all the necessary conclusions drawn
from it.
If every manager of a government department or of a division of a government department in every gubernia, uyezd,
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445
etc., if every Communist nucleus, without losing a moment,
asks, is such-and-such an institution, such-and-such a department absolutely indispensable, shall we perish if we suspend
it or reduce its activities by nine-tenths and leave no Communists in it at all?—if the posing of this question is followed
by speedy and resolute reduction of work and withdrawal
of Communists (together with their absolutely reliable
assistants among the sympathisers or non-party people),
in a very short time we shall have hundreds upon hundreds of
persons for work in the political departments of the army, as
commissars, etc. And then we shall have a very good chance
of defeating Denikin, just as we have defeated the much
stronger Kolchak.
WORK IN THE FRONT ZONE
The front zone in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet
Republic has greatly increased in the past few weeks and
has undergone an extremely rapid change. This is a harbinger or concomitant of the decisive moment of the war, of
its approaching concluding phase.
On the one hand, a vast front zone west of the Urals and
in the Ural Mountains proper has become our front zone
owing to the victories of the Red Army, the disintegration
of Kolchak, and the growth of revolution in Kolchakia.
On the other hand, an even larger zone near Petrograd and in
the South has become a front zone owing to our losses, owing
to the immense advance made by the enemy towards Petrograd and the advance from the South into the Ukraine and
towards the centre of Russia.
Work in the front zone is assuming cardinal importance.
In the Cis-Urals area, where the Red Army, is rapidly
advancing, there is a natural desire among army workers—
commissars, members of political departments, etc.—as well
as among local workers and peasants, to settle down in the
newly won localities for constructive Soviet work, a desire
which is the more natural, the greater the war fatigue and
the more distressful the picture of the destruction wrought
by Kolchak. But nothing could be more dangerous than to
yield to this desire. It would threaten to weaken our offensive, to retard it, and to increase Kolchak’s chances of
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V. I. L E N I N
recovering his strength. It would be a downright crime
against the revolution on our part.
Under no circumstances must a single extra worker be
taken from the Eastern Army for local work! * Under no
circumstances can the offensive be weakened! The only chance
we have of complete victory is for the entire population
of the Urals area, who have experienced the horrors of
Kolchak “democracy”, to take part in it to a man, and to
continue the offensive into Siberia until the complete
victory of the revolution in Siberia.
Let organisational work in the Cis-Urals and the Urals
area be delayed, let it proceed less intensively, being done
by local, young, inexperienced and weak forces alone. We
shall not perish from that. But if we weaken the offensive
against the Urals and Siberia we shall perish. We must
strengthen that offensive with the forces of the insurgent
workers in the Urals, with the forces of the Cis-Urals peasants, who have now learned to their cost the meaning of the
“constituent” promises of the Menshevik Maisky and the
Socialist-Revolutionary Chernov, and the real meaning of
these promises, i.e., Kolchak.
To weaken the offensive against the Urals and Siberia
would be to betray the revolution, to betray the cause of
the emancipation of the workers and peasants from the
Kolchak yoke.
It should be remembered in connection with the work in
the front zone which has only just been liberated that the
main task there is to make not only the workers, but the
peasants as well, put their faith in Soviet power, to explain
to them in practice that Soviet power means the power of the
workers and peasants, and at once to take the right course,
the course adopted by the Party from the experience of
twenty months of work. We must not repeat in the Urals
the mistakes which were sometimes made in Great Russia
and which we are rapidly learning to avoid.
In the front zone outside Petrograd and in that vast
front zone which has been growing so rapidly and menacingly
in the Ukraine and in the South, absolutely everything
* Unless there is urgent need none at all should be taken, but
people should be transferred from the central gubernias!
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447
must be put on a war footing, and all work, all efforts, all
thoughts subordinated to the war and only the war. Otherwise it will be impossible to repulse Denikin’s attack. That is
clear. And this must be clearly understood and fully put
into practice.
Incidentally. A feature of Denikin’s army is the large
number of officers and Cossacks in it. This is an element
which, having no mass force behind it, is extremely likely
to engage in swift raids, in gambles, in desperate ventures,
with the object of sowing panic and causing destruction for
destruction’s sake.
In fighting such a foe military discipline and military
vigilance of the highest degree are necessary. To be caught
napping or to lose one’s head means losing everything.
Every responsible Party and Soviet worker must bear this
in mind.
Military discipline in military and all other matters!
Military vigilance and strictness, and firmness in the
adoption of all measures of precaution!
ATTITUDE TOWARDS MILITARY EXPERTS
The vast conspiracy hatched at Krasnaya Gorka and whose
purpose was the surrender of Petrograd has again brought
forward and with particular emphasis the question of the
military experts and of combating counter-revolution in
the rear. There can be no doubt that the aggravation of the
food and war situation is inevitably stimulating, and will
continue to stimulate in the immediate future, still greater
efforts by the counter-revolutionaries (in the Petrograd plot
there participated the League of Regeneration, Cadets,
Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries; the Left
Socialist-Revolutionaries also participated, as a separate
group, it is true, but they did participate nevertheless).
Nor can there be any doubt that the military experts, like
the kulaks, the bourgeois intellectuals, the Mensheviks and
the Socialist-Revolutionaries, will in the near future give a
bigger proportion of traitors.
But it would be an irreparable mistake and unpardonable
weakness of character to raise on this account the question
448
V. I. L E N I N
of changing the fundamental principles of our army policy.
Hundreds and hundreds of military experts are betraying us
and will betray us; we will catch them and shoot them, but
thousands and tens of thousands of military experts have
been working for us systematically and for a long time, and
without them we could not have formed the Red Army,
which has grown out of the guerrilla force of evil memory,
and has been able to score brilliant victories in the East.
Experienced people who head our War Department rightly
point out that where the Party policy in regard to the military experts and the extirpation of the guerrilla spirit has
been adhered to most strictly, where discipline is firmest,
where political work among the troops and the work of the
commissars is conducted most thoroughly, there, generally
speaking, the number of military experts inclined to betray
us is the lowest, there the opportunities for those who are
so inclined to carry out their designs are the slightest,
there we have no laxity in the army, there its organisation
and morale are best, and there we have the most victories.
The guerrilla spirit, its vestiges, remnants and survivals
have been the cause of immeasurably greater misfortune,
disintegration, defeats, disasters and losses in men and
military equipment in our army and in the Ukrainian army
than all the betrayals of the military experts.
Our Party Programme, both on the general subject of
bourgeois experts, and on the particular problem of one of
their varieties, the military experts, has defined the policy
of the Communist Party with absolute precision. Our
Party is waging and will continue to wage “a relentless
struggle against the pseudo-radical but actually ignorant
and conceited opinion that the working people are capable
of overcoming capitalism and the bourgeois social system
without learning from bourgeois specialists, without making
use of their services and without undergoing the training
of a lengthy period of work side by side with them”.
At the same time, of course, the Party does not make
the “slightest political concession to this bourgeois section of the population”, the Party suppresses and will
continue “ruthlessly to suppress any counter-revolutionary
attempts on its part”. Naturally, whenever such an “attempt”
is made or becomes more or less probable, its “ruthless
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449
suppression” requires other qualities than the deliberateness, the cautiousness of an apprentice, which are demanded
for lengthy training, and which the latter inculcates. The
contradiction between the attitude of people engaged in the
“lengthy period of work side by side” with the military
experts, and the attitude of people absorbed in the direct
task of “ruthlessly suppressing a counter-revolutionary
attempt” of military experts might easily lead, and does lead,
to friction and conflict. The same applies to the necessary
changes of personnel, the shifting around sometimes of large
numbers of military experts which is necessitated by instances of counter-revolutionary “attempts”, and all the
more by large-scale conspiracies.
We settle, and will continue to settle, such friction and
conflicts in the Party way, demanding the same of all the
Party organisations and insisting that not the slightest
damage to practical work, not the slightest delay in the adoption of essential measures, not a shadow of hesitation in
the observance of the established principles of our military
policy be tolerated.
If some of our Party bodies adopt an incorrect tone
towards the military experts (as was recently the case in
Petrograd), or if in some cases “criticism” of military
experts turns into direct hindrance to the systematic and persistent work of employing them, the Party immediately
rectifies, and will rectify, such mistakes.
The chief and principal means of rectifying them is to
intensify political work in the army and among the mobilised, to improve the work of the commissars in the army, to
have more highly qualified commissars, to raise their level,
to have them carry out in practice that which the Party
Programme demands and which only too often is carried
out far too inadequately, i.e., “the concentration of allround control over the commanders (of the army) in the
hands of the working class”. Criticism of the military experts
by outsiders, attempts to correct matters by “lightning raids”
are too easy, and therefore hopeless and harmful. All those
who recognise their political responsibility, who take the
defects of our army to heart, let them join its ranks, either
as privates or commanders, as political workers or commissars; let each work—every Party member will find a place
450
V. I. L E N I N
suited to his abilities—inside the army organisation for
its improvement.
The Soviet government has long been paying the greatest
attention to making it possible for workers, and also peasants, Communists in particular, to master the art of war
in all seriousness. This is being done at a number of establishments, institutions and courses, but still far too little
is being done. There is still a lot of room here for personal
initiative and personal energy. Communists, in particular, should persistently study the handling of machineguns, artillery, armoured vehicles, etc., for here our backwardness is more telling, here the enemy’s superiority,
with his larger number of officers, is greater, here it is
possible for an unreliable military expert to do grave harm,
here the role of the Communist is important in the extreme.
THE FIGHT AGAINST COUNTER - REVOLUTION
IN THE REAR
Counter-revolution is raising its head in our rear and in
our midst just as it did in July of last year.
Counter-revolution has been defeated, but by no means
destroyed, and is naturally taking advantage of Denikin’s
victories and of the aggravation of the food shortage. And,
as always, in the wake of direct and open counter-revolution,
in the wake of the Black Hundreds and the Cadets, whose
strength lies in their capital, their direct connections with
Entente imperialism, and their understanding of the inevitability of dictatorship and their ability to exercise it (on
Kolchak lines)—in their wake follow the wavering,
spineless Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who embellish their deeds
with words.
There should be no illusions on this score! What is
the “nutritive medium” which engenders counter-revolutionary activities, outbreaks, conspiracies and so forth we
know full well. The medium is the bourgeoisie, the bourgeois intelligentsia, the kulaks in the countryside, and,
everywhere, the “non-party” public, as well as the SocialistRevolutionaries and the Mensheviks. We must redouble,
we must increase tenfold our watch over this medium. We
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451
must multiply tenfold our vigilance, because counterrevolutionary attempts from this quarter are absolutely
inevitable, precisely at the present moment and in the near
future. For this reason, too, repeated attempts to blow up
bridges, to foment strikes, to engage in every kind of espionage and the like, are natural. All precautions of the most
intense, systematic, repeated, wholesale and unexpected
kind are essential in all centres without exception where
the “nutritive medium” of the counter-revolutionaries has
the least chance of existing.
In regard to the Mensheviks and the Right and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, we must draw a lesson from our most
recent experience. Among their “periphery”, among the public which gravitates towards them, there is an undoubted
shifting away from Kolchak and Denikin towards Soviet
power. We have taken cognisance of this shift, and every
time it has assumed any real shape we, on our part, have
taken a step to meet it. This policy of ours we shall not change
under any circumstances, and generally speaking, there
will no doubt be an increase in the number of “migrants”
from the type of Menshevism and Socialist-Revolutionarism
which leans towards Kolchak and Denikin to the type of
Menshevism and Socialist-Revolutionarism which leans
towards Soviet power.
But at the present juncture the petty-bourgeois democrats,
headed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks, spineless and wavering as always, are watching to
see which way the wind blows, and are swinging in the direction of the victor, Denikin. This is especially true of the
“political leaders” of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
of the Mensheviks (of the type of Martov and Co.), of the
Right Socialist-Revolutionaries (of the type of Chernov and
Co.), and of their “literary groups” in general, whose members, apart from all else, are deeply offended at their political bankruptcy, and for whom hazardous ventures against
Soviet power, therefore, have an attraction that is hardly
likely to be eradicated.
We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the words
and ideology of their leaders, by their personal integrity
or hypocrisy. This is important from the standpoint of
their individual biographies. But it is not important from
452
V. I. L E N I N
the standpoint of politics, i.e., of the relations between
classes, of the relations between millions of people. Martov
and Co., “in the name of the Central Committee”, solemnly
condemn their “activists” and threaten (eternally threaten!)
to expel them from the party. But this by no means
does away with the fact that the “activists” are the strongest
of all among the Mensheviks, hide behind them, and carry
on their work on behalf of Kolchak and Denikin. Volsky
and Co. condemn Avksentyev, Chernov and Co., but this does
not in the least prevent the latter from being stronger than
Volsky, nor does it prevent Chernov from saying, “If it is
not we who are to overthrow the Bolsheviks, and not now,
then who is, and when?” The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries
may “work independently” without any agreement with the
reactionaries, with the Chernovs, but actually they are just
as much allies of Denikin and pawns in his game as the late
Left Socialist-Revolutionary Muravyov, the ex-commanderin-chief, who for “ideological” reasons opened the front to
the Czechoslovaks and to Kolchak.
Martov, Volsky and Co. fancy themselves “superior” to
both contending sides; they fancy themselves capable of
creating a “third side”.
This desire, even when it is sincere, still remains the
illusion of the petty-bourgeois democrat, who to this day,
seventy years after 1848, has still not learned the most elementary thing, namely, that in a capitalist environment only
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or the dictatorship of
the proletariat is possible, and that no third course can
exist. Martov and Co. will evidently die with this illusion. That is their affair. And it is our affair to remember
that in practice vacillations on the part of these people are
inevitable, today in the direction of Denikin, tomorrow in
the direction of the Bolsheviks. And today we must do the
task of this day.
Our task is to put the question bluntly. What is better?
To ferret out, to imprison, sometimes even to shoot hundreds
of traitors from among the Cadets, non-party people,
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who “come out”
(some with arms in hand, others with conspiracies, others
still with agitation against mobilisation, like the Menshevik printers and railwaymen, etc.) against Soviet power,
ALL OUT FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST DENIKIN!
453
in other words, in favour of Denikin? Or to allow matters to
reach such a pass that Kolchak and Denikin are able to
slaughter, shoot and flog to death tens of thousands of workers and peasants? The choice is not difficult to make.
That is how the question stands, and not otherwise.
Whoever has not yet understood this, whoever is capable
of whining over the “iniquity” of such a decision, must be
given up as hopeless and held up to public ridicule and shame.
THE POPULATION MUST BE MOBILISED
FOR WAR TO A MAN
The Soviet Republic is a fortress besieged by world
capital. We can concede the right to use it as a refuge from
Kolchak, and the right to live in it generally, only to
those who take an active part in the war and help us in every
way. Hence our right and our duty to mobilise the whole
population for the war to a man, some for army work in the
direct meaning of the term, others for subsidiary activities
of every kind in aid of the war.
To carry this out in full, an ideal organisation is required.
And since our government organisation is very far from
perfect (which is not in the least surprising in view
of its youth, its novelty and the extraordinary difficulties
which accompany its development), to attempt at once and
on a wide scale anything complete or even very considerable
in this sphere would be a most dangerous indulgence in fantastic organisational schemes.
But much can be done in a partial way to bring us nearer
to this ideal, and the “initiative” shown by our Party workers and Soviet officials in this respect is very, very far from
enough.
It will suffice here to raise this question and to draw the
attention of comrades to it. There is no need to give any
specific instructions or proposals.
Let us only observe that the petty-bourgeois democrats
who stand nearest to the Soviets and who call themselves,
by force of habit, socialists—some of the “Left” Mensheviks
and the like, for example—are particularly disposed to wax
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V. I. L E N I N
indignant at the”barbaric”, in their opinion, practice of
taking hostages.
Let them wax indignant, but unless this is done war can
not be waged, and when the danger grows acute the use of
this means must be extended and multiplied in every sense.
Not infrequently, for instance, Menshevik or yellow printers, higher railway employees or secret profiteers, kulaks,
the wealthy sections of the urban (and rural) population
and similar elements look upon defence against Kolchak and
Denikin with an infinitely criminal and infinitely brazen
attitude of indifference which grows into sabotage. Lists
of such groups must be drawn up (or they must be compelled
themselves to form groups in which each answers for everybody), and they must not only be put to work digging
trenches, as is sometimes practised, but assigned to the most
diverse and comprehensive duties for material aid to the
Red Army.
The fields of the Red Army men will be better cultivated,
the supply of food, tobacco and other necessities to the
Red Army men will be better arranged, the danger to the
lives of thousands upon thousands of workers and peasants
resulting from a single conspiracy, etc., will be considerably
reduced if we employ this method more widely, more comprehensively and more skilfully.
“WORK IN A REVOLUTIONARY WAY”
Summing up what was said above, we arrive at a simple
conclusion. What is demanded immediately and in the course
of the next few months of all Communists, of all classconscious workers and peasants, of everyone who does not
want to see Kolchak and Denikin win, is an extraordinary
accession of energy; what is needed is “work in a revolutionary way”.
The starving, exhausted and worn-out Moscow railwaymen, both skilled and unskilled, have for the sake of victory
over Kolchak inaugurated “communist subbotniks”—work
without pay for several hours a week to continue until
victory over Kolchak is complete—and have, moreover,
developed unprecedented labour productivity, exceeding the
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455
usual productivity many times over; this goes to show that
much, very much can still be done.
And we must do it.
Then we shall win.
Central Committee
of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
Written not later
than July 3 , 1 9 1 9
Published in the Bulletin
of the C.C., R.C.P.(B.)
No. 4 , July 9 , 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the Bulletin, verified with
a typewritten copy bearing
Lenin’s corrections
456
THE PRESENT SITUATION AND THE IMMEDIATE
TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
REPORT DELIVERED TO A JOINT MEETING OF THE ALL - RUSSIA
CENTRAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, THE MOSCOW SOVIET OF WORKERS’
AND RED ARMY DEPUTIES, THE ALL - RUSSIA COUNCIL OF TRADE
UNIONS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF MOSCOW FACTORY COMMITTEES
JULY 4, 1919 72
Comrades, when one is confronted with the task of assessing our general situation as it now is, the idea enters one’s
head, whether one wishes it or not, of comparing July 1919
with July 1918. I think that such a comparison, which
naturally suggests itself, can best give us a true conception of those new difficulties—to a certain extent they are
also old difficulties—which have grown up and have made
our situation a burdensome one demanding a fresh effort;
on the other hand this comparison shows us the tremendous
step forward that has been made by the world revolution
in that year and tells us why, taking a most sober, even a
most sceptical view of affairs, we again are quite confident
that we are advancing to the complete and final victory.
Recall the situation a year ago, comrades. It was in July
1918 that the menacing black clouds had gathered and that
seemingly insurmountable misfortunes threatened the Soviet Republic. The food situation, then as today, had become
graver at the end of the farming year, when stocks were running short and the new harvest had not been gathered. Last
year the situation was incomparably worse. Then, as today,
serious political and war difficulties, both at home and
abroad, were added to the food difficulties. The meeting of the
Congress of Soviets last year coincided with the revolt of
the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries in Moscow and the trea-
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
457
son of Muravyov, a Left Socialist-Revolutionary then in
command of the army, who left our front almost open. In
the summer of 1918 there was the gigantic plot in Yaroslavl
which, as has now been proved and is admitted by those
participating, was due to the activities of French Ambassador Noulens, who persuaded Savinkov to organise the plot
with a guarantee that the French troops landed at Archangel
would come to the aid of Yaroslavl and that in the most
difficult situation in Yaroslavl the town could expect to link
with Archangel and the Allies and, consequently, could
expect the early fall of Moscow. At that time the enemy
succeeded in capturing Samara, Kazan, Simbirsk, Syzran
and Saratov in the East. In the South, Cossack troops reinforced by German imperialism—this has been fully established—obtained money and munitions. The enemy launched
an offensive, closed in on us from two sides and began
to poke fun at us. From German imperialist quarters it
was said that if we could not defeat the Czechoslovaks how
could we hope to defeat them. Such was the insolent tone
adopted by the imperialists.
Such was the seemingly hopeless way in which the Soviet
Republic was surrounded at a time of unprecedented food
troubles, at a time when our army was only just beginning
to take shape. The army lacked organisation and experience
and we had to get it together hastily, contingent by contingent, when systematic, integrated work was out of the question. We lived through that year and, relying on the experience gained and never once forgetting the past, we have
every right to say today that although the situation is indeed a difficult one, if we compare what we experienced last
year with the present situation—anyone who wishes to make
a careful study of it, observe and not give way to his own
moods will have no doubts about it—we shall see that our
present situation is incomparably more stable even from the
point of view of the simple internal balance of forces, even
by comparing the facts bearing on our temporary difficulties, and to give way to panic would be criminal a thousand
times over. A year ago the situation was incomparably more
difficult yet those difficulties were surmounted, so that we
may say with absolute confidence and without any exaggeration of our forces or underestimation of our difficulties
458
V. I. L E N I N
that we shall also surmount our present difficulties. I must
give you the main comparable figures and speakers who
follow me will deal with the question in greater detail.
When the food situation became acute last summer,
things were so bad that in July and August there was literally nothing in the warehouses of the Commissariat of Food,
the organisation which deals with food supplies, nothing
which could be issued to the most war-weary, the most
tormented and the most hungry people of the towns and the
non-agricultural districts. This year our food distribution
machinery has made a tremendous advance. During the year
from August 1, 1917 to August 1, 1918 we procured only
30 million poods of grain but between August 1, 1918 and
May 1, 1919 we procured as much as 100 million poods. This
is very little compared with what we need, and it shows that
to win a victory in the struggle for food there are millions
of organisational obstacles that have to be overcome; they
are being erected against us by every peasant who has grain
surpluses and who is used to trading in a free market and who
considers it his sacred right to sell grain at uncontrolled
prices; this peasant is unable to understand that at such a
time, when the country is fighting against Russian and
international capital, trading in grain is the most serious
state crime. It is a mockery of the poor and the hungry, it is
the best service he could do the capitalist and the
profiteer. We know that every peasant who has earned his
livelihood by toil, sweat and blood, by bending his back,
understands what capitalism is. He sympathises with the
proletariat, even if only hazily, instinctively, because he
sees that the proletariat are devoting their whole lives
and forfeiting their blood to overthrow capital. But he will
have to make tremendous progress from this level before he
is able to uphold the interests of the socialist state and to
place those interests higher than the interests of the huckster who wants to profit right now while he can sell grain at
unheard-of, unprecedented prices. We are now beginning to
get the measure of it. We have made part of the journey
and, therefore, know for certain that no matter how difficult and tortuous the road, we are capable of surmounting
the difficulties. We have made considerable progress as
compared with last year but we have not yet solved all prob-
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
459
lems. We cannot promise an immediate improvement, but
we know that the situation offers much greater hopes; we
now know at any rate that our resources are not cut off as
they were last year by Cossack gangs in the South-East, by
German imperialism in the South-West and by the Czechoslovaks in the grain-producing East. The situation is much
better so that we shall be able to live through and overcome
the next few weeks that will undoubtedly bring fresh burdens
and claim fresh sacrifices knowing that we did it last year,
knowing that our situation is better, knowing that we already have practical experience of the chief difficulty of any
socialist revolution, the food difficulty. And we really can
say, without relying on assumptions and hopes, but on the
basis of our own practical experience, that we have learned
to tackle this difficulty and will learn to surmount it.
If you take the present war situation in which the Allies
collapsed when they seized the Ukraine after the Germans
and when they had Odessa and Sevastopol, we see that the
threat which seemed irrevocable to the mass of the petty
bourgeoisie and to the scared philistines turned out to be
an empty one, that it was nothing more than a giant with
feet of clay. They did everything they could to help the
whiteguards, landowners and capitalists with arms and
ammunition. The British newspapers—and British ministers, too—boasted openly that they had sent reinforcements
to Denikin. We have received information that they have
sent equipment for 250,000 men and have provided all the
arms. We have also received information, and it has been
confirmed, to the effect that they have sent dozens of tanks.
That made possible the severe attacks by Denikin that were
launched at a time when the enemy was pressing on us from
the East. We know the difficult time we experienced last
July. We do not in the least underestimate the danger and
do not close our eyes to the fact that we must go openly to
the masses, we must tell them what the situation is, tell
them the whole truth and open their eyes, because the more
this truth is known to the workers and particularly to
the peasants—it is very difficult to convince peasants of
the truth—the more determinedly, more steadfastly and
class- consciously will they come over to our side.
(Applause.)
460
V. I. L E N I N
In the Central Committee, comrades, we yesterday decided that Comrade Trotsky would make the report to you on
the war situation. Unfortunately the doctors today forbade
him absolutely to make that report. I shall, therefore, outline
the situation in a few words, although I cannot by any means
claim the role of rapporteur on these matters, I can, however,
tell in brief outline, comrades, what we heard yesterday from
Comrade Trotsky who had made a tour of the Southern
Front.
The situation there is truly a grave one, extremely heavy
attacks have been launched against us and we have suffered
huge losses. There is a double reason for our failures.
Yes, just two reasons; first, we had to withdraw large numbers of troops and transfer them as reinforcements to the
East at a time when Kolchak was attacking. Precisely
at this time Denikin carried out universal mobilisation. It
is true, as one of the members of the Revolutionary Council
of the Southern Front who has been working there a long
time told us, that universal mobilisation will be the ruin of
Denikin as it was of Kolchak; as long as he had a class army
of volunteers who hated socialism it was strong and sound,
but when he began universal recruitment he did, of course,
get an army together more quickly, but the army became the
weaker, and its class character less pronounced. Peasants
recruited into Denikin’s army will do the same in that army
as the Siberian peasants did in Kolchak’s army—they
brought complete disintegration into the army.
Another reason for the failures, apart from the tremendous increase in Denikin’s army, was the development of
guerrilla methods on the Southern Front. Comrade Trotsky
also described this in detail yesterday. You all know what
our armies experienced as a result of Grigoriev’s adventure, which resulted from Makhno’s banditry and what the
Ukrainian peasants and the entire Ukrainian proletariat
experienced during the rule of the Hetman. In the Ukraine,
owing to the low level of proletarian class-consciousness,
owing to weakness and lack of organisation, owing to Petlyura’s disorganising tactics and the pressure of German
imperialism—on these grounds hostility and guerrilla
tactics have emerged spontaneously. In every group the
peasants were taking up arms, electing their own ataman, or
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
461
“father”, to set up an authority, to create it on the spot.
They paid no attention whatever to the central authorities
and every “father” thought he was the boss on the spot, that
he alone could settle all Ukrainian problems, disregarding
what was being done at the centre. It is now quite clear to
us that in the present circumstances the peasants cannot be
won over by enthusiasm alone—such a method is not reliable.
We have warned the Ukrainian comrades a thousand
times that when it is a matter of the movement of millionstrong masses words are not enough; they must have their
own day-to-day experience so that people can verify instructions themselves, so that they believe in their own
experience. This experience has cost the Ukrainian peasants
very dear. During the German occupation they suffered
incredible misfortunes, made unbelievable sacrifices, many
times greater than what we experienced; nevertheless they
still do not know how to achieve an organisation and how to
win their independence and state sovereignty. In the first
period after the liberation from German imperialism, when
Denikin’s gangs began to gain strength, our troops did not
always deal them a suitable rebuff, and when our troops
were held up by the rapid swelling of the rivers in spring,
when it was impossible to advance and no reinforcements
came from here, there arrived that catastrophic moment in
which the first blow fell on the Ukrainian peasantry as a
whole and on the peasantry of the zone contiguous to the
Ukraine and the Don, but which will fortunately cure them
of the defects of guerrilla tactics and chaos. We know full
well that the Ukrainian peasants are strong enough to defeat Denikin’s forces, and we know that the blows they have
received are very grave and will arouse in them a new classconsciousness and fresh strength. And Comrade Trotsky
who himself saw the incredible losses suffered there, stated
definitely that the experience of the Ukrainians cannot pass
without leaving a trace, that it would bring about a complete
change in the entire psychology of the Ukrainian peasants—
is that not what we have experienced? We know that our
situation was no better last year. We know that a number
of countries looked upon us, the young Russian republic,
with contempt, and that today the same thing is beginning
in many countries, the same phenomena are to be observed.
462
V. I. L E N I N
The Ukraine is recuperating with greater difficulty than
we did, but she is recuperating. The lessons of collapse, of
guerrilla tactics, have been assimilated. This will be an epoch
of change in the entire Ukrainian revolution, and that will
influence the entire development of the Ukraine. This is
the period of change we, too, experienced when we turned
our backs on guerrilla tactics and the scattering of revolutionary phrases—we can do anything!—and began to
realise the need for sound, sustained, persistent and difficult organising activities. This was the road we took many
months after the October Revolution and on which we have
achieved considerable success. We look towards the future
fully confident that we shall surmount all difficulties.
One of the circumstances that Comrade Trotsky spoke of
as being clear evidence of the change is what he observed
in respect of deserters. He visited many gubernias where
the comrades we had sent to combat desertion from the army
had met with no success. He spoke himself at meetings and
saw that tens of thousands of deserters in this country had
either given way to panic or were trailing along too easily
in the wake of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless we had been
ready to draw conclusions that were tantamount to despair.
Trotsky, who travelled through Kursk and Ryazan, was convinced, on the example of a number of towns, that the
change that had taken place in this sphere was beyond
description. Some commissars said they were now swamped
with deserters pouring into the Red Army. They are joining the Red Army in such numbers that we can suspend our
mobilisation as the ranks are filled by old deserters returning to the army.
The peasants have seen what campaigns by the Cossacks
and by Denikin mean, and the masses of peasants have begun
to show a double degree of class-consciousness—they had
wanted an immediate peace and had been unable to understand that the Civil War had been forced on us. The peasants
did everything they could to avoid enlistment—they hid in
the woods or joined the green bands * and there tried to ig-
* Gangs of bandits in the Ukraine who engaged in plunder under
cover of political slogans against Reds and Whites during the
Civil War.—Ed.
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
463
nore everything else. This is the state of affairs that led to
collapse in the Ukraine; this was the state of affairs that
gave us many thousands of deserters. Trotsky spoke about
the change that took place when we granted the deserters
a longer period in which to report, when we approached
the problem more boldly. Hundreds of comrades turned up
for work in Ryazan Gubernia and the change took place.
They attended the meeting and deserters poured into the
Red Army. The local commissars say they could not keep
pace with them. This is the circumstance connected with the
recapture of Liski railway station which strengthened our
positions at Kursk and Voronezh. This circumstance gave
Trotsky reason to say that the position in the South was
serious and that we should bend all efforts. I maintain,
however, that the situation is not catastrophic. That is the
conclusion we arrived at yesterday. (Applause.)
That conclusion is not open to doubt and we shall do
everything to exert all our efforts; we are sure the classconsciousness of the working masses will triumph for we
have the experience of the Ukraine which tells us that the
closer Denikin approaches and the clearer it becomes
what he and the capitalists and landowners are bringing, the
easier will it be for us to combat desertion and the more
boldly can we offer the deserters a further week in which to
report. The day before yesterday the Council of Defence
extended the period by a further week because we are now
fully confident that the class-consciousness that Denikin is
bringing them will not be wasted and the Red Army will
continue to grow if we remember that all our efforts during
the next few months must be devoted to war work. We must
tell you that we shall now help the South and achieve victory
there in the same way as we did in the East. There may
be people who give way to moods, comrades, those most
inclined to panic, who will ask whether we shall not lose
what we have gained in the East if we turn our main attention to the South. As far as this is concerned we may say
that the conquests made by our troops in the East will, by
all accounts, merge with the Siberian revolution. (Applause.)
Yesterday a certain Menshevik made a speech in Moscow.
You can read Citizen Golosov’s report in Izvestia; he said
that the Mensheviks were leaving for Siberia, believing that
464
V. I. L E N I N
there was a Constituent Assembly and the power of the
people there, that universal suffrage and the will of the
people ruled, and not some dictatorship of one class, usurpation, violence—as they dub Soviet power. The experience
of these people, who flirted with Kerensky for eight months
and who gave up everything to Kornilov, who learned nothing and went over to Kolchak—experience has now shown
that it was not the Bolsheviks, but the enemies of the Bolsheviks, people who devoted all their activities to the struggle against the Bolsheviks and travelled hundreds of versts
to do it, who drew the conclusions that we have heard and
which the public learned from the reports of the Mensheviks,
conclusions that show that the Mensheviks have repelled
not only the workers but the peasants as well, and not only
the peasants, but even the kulaks. Even the kulaks are
rebelling against Kolchak! (Applause.) None of those
descriptions of the revolts against Kolchak’s rule was in the
least bit exaggerated. Not merely workers and peasants, but
also patriotically-minded intellectuals, who had all formerly sabotaged our work and who had been allies of the
Entente—Kolchak has repelled even them. We are now being
told that an insurrection is under way in the Urals, that we
have before us an instance of a real workers’ uprising; and
again we say that there is every chance that victory in the
Urals will be a turn towards the complete victory of the entire mass of the Siberian population over Kolchak’s government, and that there are grounds for expecting it within
the next few months.
Comrades, you read of the capture of Motovilikha in
yesterday’s newspapers—this is where the Urals factory
district begins. The details of the capture of Perm, where
several regiments came over to our side, confirm it, and
every day we are receiving telegram after telegram indicating that a decisive turning-point has been reached in the
Urals. This is corroborated by a telegram I received today
from Ufa dated July 2. We have more detailed information
which gives us good grounds to assert that a decisive turning-point has been reached and we shall be victorious in
the Urals. By the capture of Perm and then of Motovilikha
we have achieved a great deal; they are big factory centres
where the workers are organising, are coming over to our
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
465
side in hundreds and are cutting the railway lines in the
rear of the enemy. Probably few of you have had an opportunity of seeing Kolchak’s people, workers and peasants
who have come from there, but we should like people in
Moscow to see more of those who come from there. Were
not the Cis-Urals and Siberian peasants ready to turn their
backs on the Bolsheviks a year ago? They were discontented
and indignant at the Bolsheviks for demanding help in a
difficult war and for saying “victory over the landowners and
capitalists is not easily won and if they make war on you,
you must be prepared to make every sacrifice to defend the
gains of the revolution. Revolutions are not easily made,
and if you find these sacrifices too much for you, if you have
not enough stamina to make these sacrifices, you will
ruin the revolution”. The peasants did not want to listen to
this, they thought it was nothing more than a revolutionary
appeal. When the other side offered peace and the help
of the Entente they went over to that side. You realise,
of course, that the Siberian peasants have never experienced serfdom. They are the best-fed peasants in Russia, they
are used to exploiting people exiled from Russia; they are
peasants who could not see that there would be anything
to gain from the revolution, and these peasants got their
leaders from the entire Russian bourgeoisie, from all the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries—there were hundreds, thousands of them there. Some people put the present
population of Omsk, for instance, at 900,000 bourgeois
and others at 500,000. Literally all the bourgeoisie got
together there, all those who claimed the right to lead the
people because of their possession of knowledge and culture
and their habit of ruling—people of all parties, from the
Mensheviks to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, gathered there.
They had well-fed peasants, solid men not inclined to socialism, they had aid from all the Entente countries, from
the all-powerful countries that held power in their hands
throughout the world. They had railway lines with free
access to the sea, and that meant complete mastery, for the
fleet of the Allies has no rival anywhere in the world and
rules over the entire globe. What else was wanting? Why
was it that these people who had everything that was to be
had against the Bolsheviks—a country with strong, solid
466
V. I. L E N I N
peasants and the aid of the Entente—why did they collapse
so badly after two years’ experience that all that was left
in place of the “power of the people” was the barbaric rule
of the sons of landowners and capitalists? Kolchakia broke
down completely, and this is actually tangible when our Red
Army approaches the Urals as the liberator. A year ago the
peasants were shouting, “Down with the Bolsheviks, they
put burdens on the shoulders of the peasants”, and they went
over to the side of the landowners and capitalists. At that
time they did not believe what we told them, now they
have experienced for themselves, now they have seen that
the Bolsheviks took one horse away from a peasant whereas
the Kolchak people took everything, the horses and everything else, and re-introduced tsarist discipline. Now that the
peasants have the experience of the past they welcome the
Red Army as their deliverer and say that sound and complete
liberty will come to Siberia together with the Bolsheviks.
(Applause.)
This experience of Kolchakia is a most valuable experience for us; it shows us on a small scale what is going on
all over the world, it shows us the real sources—sources
that are invincible, sources that are ineradicable—of the
strength of the Bolsheviks. We had seemed helpless when
Siberia was in the hands of our enemies. Now that gigantic
power has collapsed. Why? Because we were right in our
appraisal of the imperialist war and its consequences, we
were right when we said that mankind would not emerge from
this as it had from previous wars—people had suffered so
much, had been tormented so much, were so full of wrath
against capitalism that the rule of the working class would set
in and socialism would be established. The “middle way” has
been mentioned here, and I know very well that the Right
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks dream of that
middle way, that the best people in those intermediate
parties dream sincerely of that middle way, but we know
from the experience of whole countries and peoples that it
is an empty dream, because there is no middle way in the
kingdom of the Constituent Assembly where the Chernovs
and Maiskys again began their ministerial careers and were
a complete failure. Is this an accident or Bolshevik slander?
Nobody will believe that it is! If they started out with such
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
467
faith in the Constituent Assembly and ended up with such a
failure it only goes to show once again that the Bolsheviks
are right when they say that there must be either the
dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of all working
people and a victory over capitalism, or the most filthy and
sanguinary rule of the bourgeoisie, even going as far as a
monarchy established by Kolchak, as in Siberia. And now I
can go over from the lessons and conclusions drawn from
Siberia to a brief outline of the international situation.
Comrades, we have made tremendous progress in our internal policy; millions of Russian peasants who a year ago
had an absolutely unenlightened view of the wide world,
who believed any glib talk about the Constituent Assembly,
who lost heart on account of the burdens imposed by Bolshevism, who ran away every time there was an appeal to
struggle—since then the peasants have had such an incredibly burdensome and sanguinary experience at the hands of
the Germans in the South that they have learned a lot. We
have become infinitely strong because millions of people
have realised what Kolchak is; millions of peasants in Siberia
have come over to Bolshevism—they are waiting for the Bolsheviks, literally all of them—not because of our sermons
and doctrines, but because of their own experience; they
called for the Socialist-Revolutionaries and put them in
power but from their having placed the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in power they got the old Russian
monarchy, the old Russian policeman, who introduced
incredible lawlessness into the country together with the
“democracy”. This cure of the people, however, is worth a
lot. (Applause.)
Take a glance at the world situation. Have we not made
a tremendous step forward in this respect during the past
year when we compare it with what we had a year ago?
Did not even people devoted to the revolution turn against
us at that time, did they not say that the Bolsheviks had
sold Russia to the German predators, that the Brest peace
had demonstrated what a serious mistake had been made,
and did they not believe that only the alliance of democratic France and Britain would save Russia? And what
happened? A few months after last year’s crisis the Brest peace
had ceased to exist. Six months passed after November 9,
468
V. I. L E N I N
1918, when Germany was defeated, and it took that six
months’ effort on the part of the French and British imperialists to conclude peace. And what did the peace bring?
What it gave was this: all the workers who had until then
been on the side of the champions of the French and British
imperialists who had preached war to the end, all of them
are now coming over to our side, not even day by day but
hour by hour; they tell themselves that they had been
deceived into waging war for four years. They had been
promised the defeat of Germany in the name of liberty, the
victory of liberty and equality, the victory of democracy, and
instead of it they had been given the Treaty of Versailles,
an unworthily imposed peace for the purpose of plunder
and profit. During that year our situation has been one of
intense struggle for the victory of the world revolution. And
our situation, if you compare it to that of the enemies,
has been such that we have acquired ever more allies
throughout the world at every step we have taken. We now
see that what the Germans, from their imperialist point of
view consider a defeat, that what the French and British
consider a full victory—we see that this is the beginning of
the end for the French and British imperialists. The workingclass movement is growing faster and faster. The workers
are demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Russia and the annulment of the Treaty of Versailles. We were
alone at the time of the Treaty of Brest; it was swept away
and its place was taken by the Treaty of Versailles that is
strangling Germany.
In appraising the last year’s experience, in recognising
frankly all difficulties, we are able to say to you calmly,
confidently and soberly, “Comrades, we have come again
and again to outline to you the general situation and to
picture to the advanced workers of Moscow those difficulties that we have again come up against; we invite you to
give some thought to the lessons we have learned in this
difficult period and on the basis of your thinking and your
appraisal, on the basis of this experience, reach, together
with us, the firm and unshakable conviction that victory
will be ours, on a world and not only on a Russian scale.
Again and again we shall muster our forces to make up for
the defeats we have suffered in the South. We shall put
PRESENT SITUATION AND IMMEDIATE TASKS OF SOVIET POWER
469
forward the tried and tested weapons of organisational
ability, discipline and loyalty, and then we are certain
that Denikin will be broken, and will collapse in the same
way as Kolchak has collapsed and the French and British
imperialists are now collapsing. (Stormy applause.)
Brief report published in
Pravda No. 1 4 5 , July 5 , 1 9 1 9
First published in full in 1 9 3 2
Published according to
the verbatim report,
verified with the Pravda text
470
THE STATE
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE SVERDLOV UNIVERSITY
JULY 11, 1919 73
Comrades, according to the plan you have adopted and
which has been conveyed to me, the subject of today’s
talk is the state. I do not know how familiar you are already
with this subject. If I am not mistaken your courses have
only just begun and this is the first time you will be tackling this subject systematically. If that is so, then it may
very well happen that in the first lecture on this difficult
subject I may not succeed in making my exposition sufficiently clear and comprehensible to many of my listeners.
And if this should prove to be the case, I would request you
not to be perturbed by the fact, because the question of the
state is a most complex and difficult one, perhaps one that
more than any other has been confused by bourgeois scholars, writers and philosophers. It should not therefore be
expected that a thorough understanding of this subject can
be obtained from one brief talk, at a first sitting. After the
first talk on this subject you should make a note of the
passages which you have not understood or which are not
clear to you, and return to them a second, a third and a
fourth time, so that what you have not understood may be
further supplemented and elucidated later, both by reading
and by various lectures and talks. I hope that we may manage
to meet once again and that we shall then be able to exchange
opinions on all supplementary questions and see what has
remained most unclear. I also hope that in addition to talks
and lectures you Will devote some time to reading at least
a few of the most important works of Marx and Engels. I have
THE STATE
471
no doubt that these most important works are to be found
in the lists of books and in the handbooks which are available in your library for the students of the Soviet and Party
school; and although, again, some of you may at first be
dismayed by the difficulty of the exposition, I must again
warn you that you should not let this worry you; what is
unclear at a first reading will become clear at a second
reading, or when you subsequently approach the question
from a somewhat different angle. For I once more repeat that
the question is so complex and has been so confused by
bourgeois scholars and writers that anybody who desires to
study it seriously and master it independently must attack
it several times, return to it again and again and consider
it from various angles in order to attain a clear, sound
understanding of it. Because it is such a fundamental,
such a basic question in all politics, and because not only
in such stormy and revolutionary times as the present, but
even in the most peaceful times, you will come across it
every day in any newspaper in connection with any economic
or political question it will be all the easier to return to it.
Every day, in one context or another, you will be returning
to the question: what is the state, what is its nature, what
is its significance and what is the attitude of our Party, the
party that is fighting for the overthrow of capitalism, the
Communist Party—what is its attitude to the state? And
the chief thing is that you should acquire, as a result of
your reading, as a result of the talks and lectures you will
hear on the state, the ability to approach this question independently, since you will be meeting with it on the most
diverse occasions, in connection with the most trifling
questions, in the most unexpected contexts and in discussions
and disputes with opponents. Only when you learn to find
your way about independently in this question may you
consider yourself sufficiently confirmed in your convictions
and able with sufficient success to defend them against
anybody and at any time.
After these brief remarks, I shall proceed to deal with
the question itself—what is the state, how did it arise and
fundamentally what attitude to the state should be displayed
by the party of the working class, which is fighting for the
complete overthrow of capitalism—the Communist Party?
472
V. I. L E N I N
I have already said that you are not likely to find another
question which has been so confused, deliberately and unwittingly, by representatives of bourgeois science, philosophy, jurisprudence, political economy and journalism,
as the question of the state. To this day it is very often
confused with religious questions; not only those professing religious doctrines (it is quite natural to expect it
of them), but even people who consider themselves free from
religious prejudice, very often confuse the specific question of the state with questions of religion and endeavour
to build up a doctrine—very often a complex one, with an
ideological, philosophical approach and argumentation—
which claims that the state is something divine, something
supernatural, that it is a certain force by virtue of which
mankind has lived, that it is a force of divine origin which
confers on people, or can confer on people, or which brings
with it something that is not of man, but is given him from
without. And it must be said that this doctrine is so closely
bound up with the interests of the exploiting classes—the
landowners and the capitalists—so serves their interests,
has so deeply permeated all the customs, views and science
of the gentlemen who represent the bourgeoisie, that you
will meet with vestiges of it on every hand, even in the
view of the state held by the Mensheviks and SocialistRevolutionaries, although they are convinced that they
can regard the state with sober eyes and reject indignantly
the suggestion that they are under the sway of religious
prejudices. This question has been so confused and complicated because it affects the interests of the ruling classes
more than any other question (yielding place in this respect
only to the foundations of economic science). The doctrine
of the state serves to justify social privilege, the existence
of exploitation, the existence of capitalism—and that is
why it would be the greatest mistake to expect impartiality on this question, to approach it in the belief that people
who claim to be scientific can give you a purely scientific
view on the subject. In the question of the state, in the doctrine of the state, in the theory of the state, when you have
become familiar with it and have gone into it deeply enough,
you will always discern the struggle between different classes,
a struggle which is reflected or expressed in a conflict
THE STATE
473
of views on the state, in the estimate of the role and
significance of the state.
To approach this question as scientifically as possible
we must cast at least a fleeting glance back on the history
of the state, its emergence and development. The most
reliable thing in a question of social science, and one that is
most necessary in order really to acquire the habit of approaching this question correctly and not allowing oneself
to get lost in the mass of detail or in the immense variety
of conflicting opinion—the most important thing if one is
to approach this question scientifically is not to forget
the underlying historical connection, to examine every question from the standpoint of how the given phenomenon arose
in history and what were the principal stages in its development, arid, from the standpoint of its development, to
examine what it has become today.
I hope that in studying this question of the state you
will acquaint yourselves with Engels’s book The Origin of
the Family, Private Property and the State. This is one of
the fundamental works of modern socialism, every sentence
of which can be accepted with confidence, in the assurance
that it has not been said at random but is based on immense
historical and political material. Undoubtedly, not all
the parts of this work have been expounded in an equally
popular and comprehensible way; some of them presume a
reader who already possesses a certain knowledge of history
and economics. But I again repeat that you should not be
perturbed if on reading this work you do not understand it
at once. Very few people do. But returning to it later,
when your interest has been aroused, you will succeed in
understanding the greater part, if not the whole of it.
I refer to this book because it gives the correct approach
to the question in the sense mentioned. It begins with a
historical sketch of the origin of the state.
This question, like every other—for example, that of
the origin of capitalism, the exploitation of man by man,
socialism, how socialism arose, what conditions gave rise
to it—can be approached soundly and confidently only if
we cast a glance back on the history of its development as a
whole. In connection with this problem it should first of
all be noted that the state has not always existed. There
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V. I. L E N I N
was a time when there was no state. It appears wherever and
whenever a division of society into classes appears, whenever
exploiters and exploited appear.
Before the first form of exploitation of man by man arose,
the first form of division into classes—slave-owners and
slaves—there existed the patriarchal family, or, as it
is sometimes called, the clan family. (Clan—tribe; at the
time people of one kin lived together.) Fairly definite
traces of these primitive times have survived in the life
of many primitive peoples; and if you take any work whatsoever on primitive civilisation, you will always come across
more or less definite descriptions, indications and recollections of the fact that there was a time, more or less similar
to primitive communism, when the division of society into
slave-owners and slaves did not exist. And in those times
there was no state, no special apparatus for the systematic
application of force and the subjugation of people by force.
It is such an apparatus that is called the state.
In primitive society, when people lived in small family
groups and were still at the lowest stages of development,
in a condition approximating to savagery—an epoch from
which modern, civilised human society is separated by
several thousand years—there were yet no signs of the
existence of a state. We find the predominance of custom, authority, respect, the power enjoyed by the elders of the clan;
we find this power sometimes accorded to women—the
position of women then was not like the downtrodden and
oppressed condition of women today—but nowhere do we
find a special category of people set apart to rule others and
who, for the sake and purpose of rule, systematically and
permanently have at their disposal a certain apparatus of
coercion, an apparatus of violence, such as is represented at
the present time, as you all realise, by armed contingents
of troops, prisons and other means of subjugating the will
of others by force—all that which constitutes the essence of
the state.
If we get away from what are known as religious teachings,
from the subtleties, philosophical arguments and various
opinions advanced by bourgeois scholars, if we get away from
these and try to get at the real core of the matter, we shall
find that the state really does amount to such an apparatus of
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rule which stands outside society as a whole. When there
appears such a special group of men occupied solely with
government, and who in order to rule need a special apparatus of coercion to subjugate the will of others by force—
prisons, special contingents of men, armies, etc.—then
there appears the state.
But there was a time when there was no state, when
general ties, the community itself, discipline and the ordering of work were maintained by force of custom and tradition, by the authority or the respect enjoyed by the elders
of the clan or by women—who in those times not only
frequently enjoyed a status equal to that of men, but not
infrequently enjoyed an even higher status—and when there
was no special category of persons who were specialists in
ruling. History shows that the state as a special apparatus
for coercing people arose wherever and whenever there
appeared a division of society into classes, that is, a division into groups of people some of which were permanently
in a position to appropriate the labour of others, where some
people exploited others.
And this division of society into classes must always
be clearly borne in mind as a fundamental fact of history.
The development of all human societies for thousands of
years, in all countries without exception, reveals a general
conformity to law, a regularity and consistency; so that
at first we had a society without classes—the original
patriarchal, primitive society, in which there were no
aristocrats; then we had a society based on slavery—a
slaveowning society. The whole of modern, civilised Europe has passed through this stage—slavery ruled supreme
two thousand years ago. The vast majority of peoples
of the other parts of the world also passed through this stage.
Traces of slavery survive to this day among the less developed peoples; you will find the institution of slavery in
Africa, for example, at the present time. The division into
slaveowners and slaves was the first important class division. The former group not only owned all the means of
production—the land and the implements, however poor
and primitive they may have been in those times—but also
owned people. This group was known as slave-owners,
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V. I. L E N I N
while those who laboured and supplied labour for others
were known as slaves.
This form was followed in history by another—feudalism. In the great majority of countries slavery in the course
of its development evolved into serfdom. The fundamental
division of society was now into feudal lords and peasant
serfs. The form of relations between people changed. The
slave-owners had regarded the slaves as their property;
the law had confirmed this view and regarded the slave as
a chattel completely owned by the slave-owner. As far as
the peasant serf was concerned, class oppression and dependence remained, but it was not considered that the feudal
lord owned the peasants as chattels, but that he was only
entitled to their labour, to the obligatory performance of
certain services. In practice, as you know, serfdom, especially in Russia where it survived longest of all and assumed
the crudest forms, in no way differed from slavery.
Further, with the development of trade, the appearance
of the world market and the development of money circulation, a new class arose within feudal society—the capitalist
class. From the commodity, the exchange of commodities
and the rise of the power of money, there derived the power
of capital. During the eighteenth century, or rather, from
the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth
century, revolutions took place all over the world. Feudalism was abolished in all the countries of Western Europe.
Russia was the last country in which this took place. In
1861 a radical change took place in Russia as well; as a
consequence of this one form of society was replaced by
another—feudalism was replaced by capitalism, under
which division into classes remained, as well as various traces
and remnants of serfdom, but fundamentally the division
into classes assumed a different form.
The owners of capital, the owners of the land and the
owners of the factories in all capitalist countries constituted and still constitute an insignificant minority of the
population who have complete command of the labour of
the whole people, and, consequently, command, oppress
and exploit the whole mass of labourers, the majority of
whom are proletarians, wage-workers, who procure their
livelihood in the process of production only by the sale of
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their own worker’s hands, their labour-power. With the
transition to capitalism, the peasants, who had been
disunited and downtrodden in feudal times, were converted
partly (the majority) into proletarians, and partly (the
minority) into wealthy peasants who themselves hired
labourers and who constituted a rural bourgeoisie.
This fundamental fact—the transition of society from
primitive forms of slavery to serfdom and finally to capitalism—you must always bear in mind, for only by remembering this fundamental fact, only by examining all political
doctrines placed in this fundamental scheme, will you be
able properly to appraise these doctrines and understand
what they refer to; for each of these great periods in the history of mankind, slave-owning, feudal and capitalist, embraces scores and hundreds of centuries and presents such a
mass of political forms, such a variety of political doctrines,
opinions and revolutions, that this extreme diversity
and immense variety (especially in connection with the
political, philosophical and other doctrines of bourgeois
scholars and politicians) can be understood only by firmly
holding, as to a guiding thread, to this division of society
into classes, this change in the forms of class rule, and from
this standpoint examining all social questions—economic,
political, spiritual, religious, etc.
If you examine the state from the standpoint of this
fundamental division, you will find that before the division
of society into classes, as I have already said, no state
existed. But as the social division into classes arose and
took firm root, as class society arose, the state also arose and
took firm root. The history of mankind knows scores and
hundreds of countries that have passed or are still passing
through slavery, feudalism and capitalism. In each of these
countries, despite the immense historical changes that have
taken place, despite all the political vicissitudes and all
the revolutions due to this development of mankind, to the
transition from slavery through feudalism to capitalism
and to the present world-wide struggle against capitalism,
you will always discern the emergence of the state. It has
always been a certain apparatus which stood outside society
and consisted of a group of people engaged solely, or almost
solely, or mainly, in ruling. People are divided into the
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V. I. L E N I N
ruled, and into specialists in ruling, those who rise above
society and are called rulers, statesmen. This apparatus,
this group of people who rule others, always possesses certain means of coercion, of physical force, irrespective of
whether this violence over people is expressed in the primitive club, or in more perfected types of weapons in the epoch
of slavery, or in the firearms which appeared in the Middle
Ages, or, finally, in modern weapons, which in the twentieth
century are technical marvels and are based entirely on the
latest achievements of modern technology. The methods of
violence changed, but whenever there was a state there existed
in every society a group of persons who ruled, who commanded, who dominated and who in order to maintain their
power possessed an apparatus of physical coercion, an apparatus of violence, with those weapons which corresponded to
the technical level of the given epoch. And by examining
these general phenomena, by asking ourselves why no state
existed when there were no classes, when there were no
exploiters and exploited, and why it appeared when classes
appeared—only in this way shall we find a definite answer to
the question of what is the nature and significance of the state.
The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one
class over another. When there were no classes in society,
when, before the epoch of slavery, people laboured in primitive conditions of greater equality, in conditions when the
productivity of labour was still at its lowest, and when
primitive man could barely procure the wherewithal for the
crudest and most primitive existence, a special group of
people whose function is to rule and to dominate the rest of
society, had not and could not yet have emerged. Only when
the first form of the division of society into classes appeared,
only when slavery appeared, when a certain class of people,
by concentrating on the crudest forms of agricultural labour,
could produce a certain surplus, when this surplus was not
absolutely essential for the most wretched existence of the
slave and passed into the hands of the slave-owner, when in
this way the existence of this class of slave-owners was secure—then in order that it might take firm root it was necessary for a state to appear.
And it did appear—the slave-owning state, an apparatus
which gave the slave-owners power and enabled them to
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rule over the slaves. Both society and the state were then on
a much smaller scale than they are now, they possessed
incomparably poorer means of communication—the modern
means of communication did not then exist. Mountains,
rivers and seas were immeasurably greater obstacles than
they are now, and the state took shape within far narrower
geographical boundaries. A technically weak state apparatus
served a state confined within relatively narrow boundaries
and with a narrow range of action. Nevertheless, there did
exist an apparatus which compelled the slaves to remain in
slavery, which kept one part of society subjugated to and
oppressed by another. It is impossible to compel the greater
part of society to work systematically for the other part of
society without a permanent apparatus of coercion. So long
as there were no classes, there was no apparatus of this sort.
When classes appeared, everywhere and always, as the division grew and took firmer hold, there also appeared a
special institution—the state. The forms of state were
extremely varied. As early as the period of slavery we find
diverse forms of the state in the countries that were the most
advanced, cultured and civilised according to the standards
of the time—for example, in ancient Greece and Rome—
which were based entirely on slavery. At that time there
was already a difference between monarchy and republic,
between aristocracy and democracy. A monarchy is the
power of a single person, a republic is the absence of any nonelected authority; an aristocracy is the power of a relatively small minority, a democracy is the power of the people
(democracy in Greek literally means the power of the people).
All these differences arose in the epoch of slavery. Despite
these differences, the state of the slave-owning epoch
was a slave-owning state, irrespective of whether it was a
monarchy or a republic, aristocratic or democratic.
In every course on the history of ancient times, in any
lecture on this subject, you will hear about the struggle
which was waged between the monarchical and republican
states. But the fundamental fact is that the slaves were not
regarded as human beings—not only were they not regarded
as citizens, they were not even regarded as human beings.
Roman law regarded them as chattels. The law of manslaughter, not to mention the other laws for the protection of the
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V. I. L E N I N
person, did not extend to slaves. It defended only the slaveowners, who were alone recognised as citizens with full
rights. But whether a monarchy was instituted or a republic, it was a monarchy of the slave-owners or a republic of
the slave-owners. All rights were enjoyed by the slave-owners, while the slave was a chattel in the eyes of the law; and
not only could any sort of violence be perpetrated against
a slave, but even the killing of a slave was not considered a
crime. Slave-owning republics differed in their internal
organisation, there were aristocratic republics and democratic republics. In an aristocratic republic only a small number
of privileged persons took part in the elections; in a democratic republic everybody took part—but everybody meant
only the slave-owners, that is, everybody except the slaves.
This fundamental fact must be borne in mind, because it
throws more light than any other on the question of the
state and clearly demonstrates the nature of the state.
The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by
another, a machine for holding in obedience to one class
other, subordinated classes. There are various forms of
this machine. The slave-owning state could be a monarchy,
an aristocratic republic or even a democratic republic. In
fact the forms of government varied extremely, but their
essence was always the same: the slaves enjoyed no rights
and constituted an oppressed class; they were not regarded
as human beings. We find the same thing in the feudal state.
The change in the form of exploitation transformed the
slave-owning state into the feudal state. This was of immense
importance. In slave-owning society the slave enjoyed no
rights whatever and was not regarded as a human being;
in feudal society the peasant was bound to the soil. The
chief distinguishing feature of serfdom was that the peasants
(and at that time the peasants constituted the majority;
the urban population was still very small) were considered
bound to the land—this is the very basis of “serfdom”. The
peasant might work a definite number of days for himself on
the plot assigned to him by the landlord; on the other days
the peasant serf worked for his lord. The essence of class society remained—society was based on class exploitation.
Only the owners of the land could enjoy full rights; the peasants had no rights at all. In practice their condition differed
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very little from the condition of slaves in the slave-owning
state. Nevertheless, a wider road was opened for their emancipation, for the emancipation of the peasants, since the
peasant serf was not regarded as the direct property of the
lord. He could work part of his time on his own plot, could,
so to speak, belong to himself to some extent; and with the
wider opportunities for the development of exchange and
trade relations the feudal system steadily disintegrated and
the scope of emancipation of the peasantry steadily widened.
Feudal society was always more complex than slave society.
There was a greater development of trade and industry,
which even in those days led to capitalism. In the Middle
Ages feudalism predominated. And here too the forms of
state varied, here too we find both the monarchy and the
republic, although the latter was much more weakly expressed. But always the feudal lord was regarded as the only
ruler. The peasant serfs were deprived of absolutely all
political rights.
Neither under slavery nor under the feudal system could
a small minority of people dominate over the vast majority
without coercion. History is full of the constant attempts
of the oppressed classes to throw off oppression. The history
of slavery contains records of wars of emancipation from
slavery which lasted for decades. Incidentally, the name
“Spartacist” now adopted by the German Communists—
the only German party which is really fighting against the
yoke of capitalism—was adopted by them because Spartacus was one of the most prominent heroes of one of the greatest revolts of slaves, which took place about two thousand
years ago. For many years the seemingly omnipotent
Roman Empire, which rested entirely on slavery, experienced
the shocks and blows of a widespread uprising of slaves
who armed and united to form a vast army under the leadership of Spartacus. In the end they were defeated, captured
and put to torture by the slave-owners. Such civil wars
mark the whole history of the existence of class society.
I have just mentioned an example of the greatest of these
civil wars in the epoch of slavery. The whole epoch of feudalism is likewise marked by constant uprisings of the
peasants. For example, in Germany in the Middle Ages the
struggle between the two classes—the landlords and the
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V. I. L E N I N
serfs—assumed wide proportions and was transformed into
a civil war of the peasants against the landowners. You
are all familiar with similar examples of repeated uprisings
of the peasants against the feudal landowners in Russia.
In order to maintain their rule and to preserve their
power, the feudal lords had to have an apparatus by which
they could unite under their subjugation a vast number of
people and subordinate them to certain laws and regulations; and all these laws fundamentally amounted to one
thing—the maintenance of the power of the lords over the
peasant serfs. And this was the feudal state, which in
Russia, for example, or in quite backward Asiatic countries
(where feudalism prevails to this day) differed in form—it
was either a republic or a monarchy. When the state was a
monarchy, the rule of one person was recognised; when it
was a republic, the participation of the elected representatives of landowning society was in one degree or another
recognised—this was in feudal society. Feudal society
represented a division of classes under which the vast
majority—the peasant serfs—were completely subjected to
an insignificant minority—the owners of the land.
The development of trade, the development of commodity
exchange, led to the emergence of a new class—the capitalists. Capital took shape at the close of the Middle
Ages, when, after the discovery of America, world trade
developed enormously, when the quantity of precious metals
increased, when silver and gold became the medium of
exchange, when money circulation made it possible for
individuals to possess tremendous wealth. Silver and gold
were recognised as wealth all over the world. The economic
power of the landowning class declined and the power of
the new class—the representatives of capital—developed.
The reconstruction of society was such that all citizens
seemed to be equal, the old division into slave-owners and
slaves disappeared, all were regarded as equal before the
law irrespective of what capital each owned; whether he
owned land as private property, or was a poor man who owned
nothing but his labour-power—all were equal before the
law. The law protects everybody equally; it protects the
property of those who have it from attack by the masses who,
possessing no property, possessing nothing but their labour-
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483
power, grow steadily impoverished and ruined and become
converted into proletarians. Such is capitalist society.
I cannot dwell on it in detail. You will return to this
when you come to discuss the Programme of the Party—
you will then hear a description of capitalist society. This
society advanced against serfdom, against the old feudal
system, under the slogan of liberty. But it was liberty
for those who owned property. And when feudalism was
shattered, which occurred at the end of the eighteenth century
and the beginning of the nineteenth century—in Russia it
occurred later than in other countries, in 1861—the feudal
state was then superseded by the capitalist state, which
proclaims liberty for the whole people as its slogan, which
declares that it expresses the will of the whole people and
denies that it is a class state. And here there developed a
struggle between the socialists, who are fighting for the
liberty of the whole people, and the capitalist state—a
struggle which has led to the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic and which is spreading all over the world.
To understand the struggle that has been started against
world capital, to understand the nature of the capitalist
state, we must remember that when the capitalist state advanced against the feudal state it entered the fight under
the slogan of liberty. The abolition of feudalism meant
liberty for the representatives of the capitalist state and
served their purpose, inasmuch as serfdom was breaking down
and the peasants had acquired the opportunity of owning
as their full property the land which they had purchased for
compensation or in part by quit-rent—this did not concern
the state: it protected property irrespective of its origin,
because the state was founded on private property. The
peasants became private owners in all the modern, civilised
states. Even when the landowner surrendered part of his
land to the peasant, the state protected private property,
rewarding the landowner by compensation, by letting him
take money for the land. The state as it were declared that
it would fully preserve private property, and the state accorded it
every support and protection. The state recognised the
property rights of every merchant, industrialist and manufacturer. And this society, based on private property, on
the power of capital, on the complete subjection of the
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V. I. L E N I N
propertyless workers and labouring masses of the peasantry,
proclaimed that its rule was based on liberty. Combating
feudalism, it proclaimed freedom of property and was
particularly proud of the fact that the state had ceased,
supposedly, to be a class state.
Yet the state continued to be a machine which helped the
capitalists to hold the poor peasants and the working class
in subjection. But in outward appearance it was free. It
proclaimed universal suffrage, and declared through its
champions, preachers, scholars and philosophers, that it was
not a class state. Even now, when the Soviet Socialist
Republics have begun to fight the state, they accuse us of
violating liberty, of building a state based on coercion, on
the suppression of some by others, whereas they represent a
popular, democratic state. And now, when the world socialist revolution has begun, and when the revolution has
succeeded in some countries, when the fight against world
capital has grown particularly acute, this question of the
state has acquired the greatest importance and has become,
one might say, the most burning one, the focus of all
present-day political questions and political disputes.
Whichever party we take in Russia or in any of the more
civilised countries, we find that nearly all political
disputes, disagreements and opinions now centre around the
conception of the state. Is the state in a capitalist country,
in a democratic republic—especially one like Switzerland
or the U.S.A.—in the freest democratic republics, an expression of the popular will, the sum total of the general decision of the people, the expression of the national will,
and so forth; or is the state a machine that enables the
capitalists of those countries to maintain their power over
the working class and the peasantry? That is the fundamental
question around which all political disputes all over the
world now centre. What do they say about Bolshevism? The
bourgeois press abuses the Bolsheviks. You will not find
a single newspaper that does not repeat the hackneyed
accusation that the Bolsheviks violate popular rule. If our
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries in their simplicity of heart (perhaps it is not simplicity, or perhaps it is
the simplicity which the proverb says is worse than robbery)
think that they discovered and invented the accusation that
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the Bolsheviks have violated liberty and popular rule, they
are ludicrously mistaken. Today every one of the richest
newspapers in the richest countries, which spend tens of
millions on their distribution and disseminate bourgeois
lies and imperialist policy in tens of millions of copies—
every one of these newspapers repeats these basic arguments
and accusations against Bolshevism, namely, that the
U.S.A., Britain and Switzerland are advanced states based
on popular rule, whereas the Bolshevik republic is a state of
bandits in which liberty is unknown, and that the Bolsheviks have violated the idea of popular rule and have even
gone so far as to disperse the Constituent Assembly. These
terrible accusations against the Bolsheviks are repeated all
over the world. These accusations lead us directly to the
question—what is the state? In order to understand these
accusations, in order to study them and have a fully intelligent attitude towards them, and not to examine them on
hearsay but with a firm opinion of our own, we must have
a clear idea of what the state is. We have before us capitalist states of every kind and all the theories in defence of
them which were created before the war. In order to answer
the question properly we must critically examine all these
theories and views.
I have already advised you to turn for help to Engels’s
book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State. This book says that every state in which private
ownership of the land and means of production exists, in
which capital dominates, however democratic it may be,
is a capitalist state, a machine used by the capitalists to
keep the working class and the poor peasants in subjection;
while universal suffrage, a Constituent Assembly, a parliament are merely a form, a sort of promissory note, which
does not change the real state of affairs.
The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital
manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and
in another way where another form exists—but essentially
the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are
voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether
the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more
democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of
capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the
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V. I. L E N I N
world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and
those who have been there since 1905 probably know it)
is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so
openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no
franchise can change its nature.
The democratic republic and universal suffrage were an
immense progressive advance as compared with feudalism;
they have enabled the proletariat to achieve its present
unity and solidarity, to form those firm and disciplined ranks
which are waging a systematic struggle against capital.
There was nothing even approximately resembling this
among the peasant serfs, not to speak of the slaves. The
slaves, as we know, revolted, rioted, started civil wars,
but they could never create a class-conscious majority and
parties to lead the struggle, they could not clearly realise
what their aims were, and even in the most revolutionary
moments of history they were always pawns in the hands of
the ruling classes. The bourgeois republic, parliament, universal suffrage—all represent great progress from the standpoint of the world development of society. Mankind moved
towards capitalism, and it was capitalism alone which,
thanks to urban culture, enabled the oppressed proletarian
class to become conscious of itself and to create the world
working-class movement, the millions of workers organised
all over the world in parties—the socialist parties which
are consciously leading the struggle of the masses. Without parliamentarism, without an electoral system, this development of the working class would have been impossible.
That is why all these things have acquired such great importance in the eyes of the broad masses of people. That is
why a radical change seems to be so difficult. It is not only
the conscious hypocrites, scientists and priests that uphold
and defend the bourgeois lie that the state is free and that
it is its mission to defend the interests of all; so also do
a large number of people who sincerely adhere to the old
prejudices and who cannot understand the transition from
the old, capitalist society to socialism. Not only people
who are directly dependent on the bourgeoisie, not only
those who live under the yoke of capital or who have been
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bribed by capital (there are a large number of all sorts of
scientists, artists, priests, etc., in the service of capital),
but even people who are simply under the sway of the
prejudice of bourgeois liberty, have taken up arms against
Bolshevism all over the world because when the Soviet
Republic was founded it rejected these bourgeois lies and
openly declared: you say your state is free, whereas in reality, as long as there is private property, your state, even if
it is a democratic republic, is nothing but a machine used
by the capitalists to suppress the workers, and the freer the
state, the more clearly is this expressed. Examples of this
are Switzerland in Europe and the United States in America.
Nowhere does capital rule so cynically and ruthlessly, and
nowhere is it so clearly apparent, as in these countries,
although they are democratic republics, no matter how
prettily they are painted and notwithstanding all the talk
about labour democracy and the equality of all citizens.
The fact is that in Switzerland and the United States capital
dominates, and every attempt of the workers to achieve the
slightest real improvement in their condition is immediately
met by civil war. There are fewer soldiers, a smaller standing army, in these countries—Switzerland has a militia and
every Swiss has a gun at home, while in America there was
no standing army until quite recently—and so when there is
a strike the bourgeoisie arms, hires soldiery and suppresses
the strike; and nowhere is this suppression of the workingclass movement accompanied by such ruthless severity as in
Switzerland and the U.S.A., and nowhere does the influence
of capital in parliament manifest itself as powerfully as
in these countries. The power of capital is everything, the
stock exchange is everything, while parliament and elections are marionettes, puppets.... But the eyes of the workers
are being opened more and more, and the idea of Soviet
government is spreading farther and farther afield, especially after the bloody carnage we have just experienced. The
necessity for a relentless war on the capitalists is becoming
clearer and clearer to the working class.
Whatever guise a republic may assume, however democratic it may be, if it is a bourgeois republic, if it retains
private ownership of the land and factories, and if private
capital keeps the whole of society in wage-slavery, that is,
488
V. I. L E N I N
if the republic does not carry out what is proclaimed in
the Programme of our Party and in the Soviet Constitution,
then this state is a machine for the suppression of some
people by others. And we shall place this machine in the
hands of the class that is to overthrow the power of capital.
We shall reject all the old prejudices about the state meaning universal equality—for that is a fraud: as long as there
is exploitation there cannot be equality. The landowner
cannot be the equal of the worker, or the hungry man
the equal of the full man. This machine called the state,
before which people bowed in superstitious awe, believing
the old tales that it means popular rule, tales which the
proletariat declares to be a bourgeois lie—this machine the
proletariat will smash. So far we have deprived the capitalists of this machine and have taken it over. We shall use
this machine, or bludgeon, to destroy all exploitation.
And when the possibility of exploitation no longer exists
anywhere in the world, when there are no longer owners
of land and owners of factories, and when there is no longer
a situation in which some gorge while others starve, only
when the possibility of this no longer exists shall we consign this machine to the scrap-heap. Then there will be no
state and no exploitation. Such is the view of our Communist
Party. I hope that we shall return to this subject in subsequent lectures, return to it again and again.
First published in
Pravda No. 1 5 , January 1 8 , 1 9 2 9
Published according to
the verbatim report
489
THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
OF THE REPUBLIC
REPORT DELIVERED TO THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE
OF THE R.C.P.(B.)
JULY 12, 1919 74
NEWSPAPER REPORT
The previous speaker spoke of the feelings of deep regret with which we have had to contravene our food policy. 75
None of this, of course, is anything more than darning the
holes of an old garment instead of acquiring a new one.
But what we have done is right. We may recall last year,
when the food situation was much worse—we had absolutely
no food resources. At that time there was considerable
confusion in our ranks because we had to retract from the
principles of our food policy. It was thought that small
concessions would lead to bigger ones and that a return to
a socialist policy would be impossible. That turned out to
be untrue. Difficult as the situation was, we got over it,
and our enemies’ hopes were not fulfilled.
The situation today is much better than last year’s; we
now have food resources we dared not even dream of last
year. The territory occupied by the enemy was much greater last year. We have now scored big victories in the East
where a bumper harvest is expected. Apart from that we
have experience, and that is the main thing. Having this
experience we are able to say with greater confidence that
we shall overcome the difficulties that stand in our way.
July is the worst month not only as far as food is concerned,
but also because counter-revolution raises its head higher
than before.
490
V. I. L E N I N
The counter-revolutionary wave inside the country, however, was more powerful last year than this. The activities
of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had reached the highest
point at that time. The armed struggle that they launched
suddenly in place of their verbal support took us by
surprise. The difficulties were immense, for they had chosen
their time very cleverly. The Socialist-Revolutionaries
hoped to play on the mood of the man in the street who was
in despair from hunger. At the same time Muravyov betrayed
us at the front. The revolt of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries was very quickly suppressed but there was serious
wavering in the provinces for several days.
We now have a more correct attitude to the petty-bourgeois parties, due to the year’s experience. The experience
of the revolts led by Makhno and Grigoriev and the waverings of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks have
shown us that their influence over the worker and peasant
masses is only an apparent one. Their actual strength is
nil, so that when we are told that Chernov at a recent meeting of the Council of the Right Socialist-Revolutionary
Party said, “If not we and not today, then who else will
kick out the Bolsheviks?” we can only say, “The nightmare
was terrible, but God is good.” Today we can only express
our amazement at their not being tired of repeating their own
mistakes. Throughout two years we have been witnessing the
complete collapse of all their dreams about “democracy in
general”, nevertheless every one of their groups considers it
its duty to make the experiment in its own way. The development of the revolution shows that their mistakes are
being repeated and that the repetition is causing us countless calamities. The peasants in the East supported the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks because they
did not want war and realised that the Bolsheviks were a
sound government that would insist on their participating
in the war. The result was that Kolchak forces appeared and
brought countless calamities. Now that they are retreating
they are destroying everything in their path, the country is
completely ruined and the sufferings there are unimaginable,
far worse than anything we are experiencing. To speak of
Bolshevik atrocities in face of these facts requires all the
hypocrisy of bourgeois writers.
THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
491
In the Kolchak business, the Socialist-Revolutionaries
and Mensheviks have again followed the same sanguinary
political road as they did with Kerensky; it has brought
them back to the starting-point and has demonstrated the
falseness of all their coalition ideas.
The masses have now abandoned them and we are witnessing a revolt in Siberia in which not only workers and
peasants but even intellectuals and kulaks are taking part.
We see the complete collapse of Kolchak’s movement. Apparently every one of their mistakes must be repeated before
the eyes of the unenlightened masses are opened. When the
masses see that the coalition leads to reaction they come
to us, battered and tormented but nevertheless taught
and steeled by experience. The same may be said of all
imperialists. They drag out the war, cause greater exhaustion and thereby merely strengthen in the masses a consciousness of the need for revolution. Difficult as the year
has been, it has been useful because not only the leaders
but even the broadest masses, even the peasants in the most
remote holes and corners have had an experience that has
led them to draw the same conclusions as we do. This gives
us firm conviction in our victory. Without Kolchak the
Siberian peasants would not have become convinced in a
single year that they need our workers’ government. It took
the very sad experience of this year to convince them of
that.
It is quite possible that the Socialist-Revolutionary and
Menshevik literary groups will die out without ever having
understood anything about our revolution and for a long
time will continue repeating, parrot fashion, that theirs
would have been the best government in the world, a truly
socialist and truly democratic government without civil
war, if it had not been for Kolchak and the Bolsheviks; that,
however, is not important, there have also been stubborn
cranks in all revolutions. The important thing is that the
masses who followed them are now leaving them. The peasant
masses have gone over to the Bolsheviks—that is a fact.
Siberia demonstrates this best of all. The peasants will
not forget what they experienced under Kolchak’s government; the greater the trials, the better the Bolsheviks’
lessons will have been learned.
492
V. I. L E N I N
We are now gaining important victories on the Eastern
Front and these give us reason to hope that we shall have
finished with Kolchak in the East in a few weeks. A turningpoint has been reached on the Southern Front, and, what is
more important, a turning-point in the temper of the
peasants in the vicinity of the front has also been reached.
These, incidentally, are rich peasants—middle peasants in
those parts are like kulaks. But there has been a change in
their mood in our favour—this is a fact that is proved by
the return of deserters and by the armed resistance we are
putting up. The workers living in the towns, where they
are close to events, assimilate our ideas from conferences,
speeches and newspapers. The peasant cannot do this, he is
convinced only from his own experience. The peasants in
the South were prepared to curse the Bolsheviks in words,
but when Denikin arrived shouting about democracy (for
it is not only the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries
that shout about it, the word is to be found in every line
of Denikin’s newspaper) the peasants began to fight against
him for they soon realised from their own experience that
floggings and plunder lay hidden under the pretty words.
The torments and ruination in the districts near the Southern
Front are having the same effect as in the East—they are
giving us more reliable gains. We have not for a moment
forgotten the difficulties that we are experiencing, we have
not forgotten that the greatest effort and the mobilisation of
our forces are essential, but we can say that the result will
be a more sound victory. The experience of the past year has
shown the masses that today only one form of power is possible and necessary—the workers’ and peasants’ power of
the Bolsheviks. That is what enables us to say with confidence that this difficult July will be the last difficult
July.
A glance at the international situation only serves to
strengthen our confidence in victory.
Forces friendly to us are growing up in all hostile states.
Take the small countries—Finland, Latvia, Poland,
Rumania. All attempts to set up a coalition of the big and
petty bourgeoisie in those countries to fight against us have
ended in a break-down and ours turns out to be the only form
of government possible there.
THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
493
The same thing is true of big states. Take Germany. Immediately the Treaty of Versailles was signed a big revolutionary movement began. The Entente bogey has gone
and the workers are now rising, notwithstanding all the
sacrifices that the proletariat has made. During the past
year Germany has had the same experience as we and Siberia have had, but in a somewhat different form—experience
that will lead to the communist revolution. And what about
the Entente, the victors? They say that victory has given
them security, but no sooner had they signed the peace
treaty than it became clear that in signing it they were
signing their own death warrant. The mass movement against
them is growing. That is why we say with confidence, taking all our experience, all that has happened in the past
year into account, that we shall surmount all difficulties
and that this July will be the last difficult July, and that
next July we shall welcome the victory of the world Soviet
republic and that victory will be full and complete.
Pravda No. 154,
July 16 , 1919
Published according to
the Pravda text
494
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
RAMSAY MACDONALD ON THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
The French social-chauvinist newspaper l’Humanité, 76
issue No. 5475, dated April 14, 1919, contains an editorial
by Ramsay MacDonald, the well-known leader of the British
so-called Independent Labour Party, which is actually an
opportunist party that has always been dependent on the
bourgeoisie. This article is so typical of the position taken
by the trend which it is customary to call the Centre and
which was called by that name at the First Congress of the
Communist International in Moscow that we quote it in
full together with the introductory lines of the l’Humanité
editorial board:
THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
Our friend Ramsay MacDonald was the authoritative
leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons before
the war. A socialist and a man of convictions, he considered
it his duty to condemn the war as imperialist, in contrast to
those who welcomed it as a war for a righteous cause. Consequently, after August 4 he resigned from his position of
leader of the Labour Party, and together with comrades in the
Independent Labour Party and with Keir Hardie whom we
all admire, did not fear to declare war on war.
This required day-to-day heroism.
MacDonald showed by his example that courage, in the
words of Jaurès, “consists in not submitting to the law of the
triumphant lie and in not serving as the echo of the applause
of imbeciles and the catcalling of fanatics”.
In the khaki * election held at the end of November,
MacDonald was defeated by Lloyd George. But we may rest
assured that MacDonald will have his revenge, and that in
the very near future.
* Called “khaki” election by soldiers who were ordered to vote for
the Government candidates.
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
495
The rise of separatist tendencies in the national and international
policies of socialism has been a misfortune for the socialist movement.
It is, however, not a bad thing that there are shades of opinion and
variations of method within socialism. Our socialism is still in the
experimental stage.
Its basic principles are fixed, but the method of best applying
them, the combinations which will bring about the triumph of the
revolution, the manner in which the socialist state is to be built are
still problems to be discussed, and the last word concerning them has
not yet been spoken. Only deep study of all these points can lead us
to sublimer truth.
Extremes may clash, and such a struggle may serve to fortify
socialist views; but evil commences when everybody considers his
opponent a traitor, a believer fallen from grace, one who deserves to
have the gates of the party paradise slammed in his face.
When socialists are possessed by the spirit of dogmatism, like
that which in former days of Christianity preached civil war for the
greater glory of God and the discomfiture of the devil, the bourgeoisie may sleep in peace, for the days of its rule are not yet ended, no
matter how great the local and international successes achieved by
socialism.
At the present moment our movement is unfortunately encountering a new obstacle. A new International has been proclaimed in
Moscow.
I am very much grieved over this, for the Socialist International
is at present sufficiently open to all forms of socialist thought and in
spite of all theoretical and practical disagreements engendered within
it by Bolshevism I see no reason why its Left wing should separate
from the Centre and form an independent group.
It must first of all be remembered that we are still living, in the
infancy of the revolution. The forms of government that have sprung
up from the political and social debris wrought by the war have not
yet stood the test and have not yet been definitely established.
A new broom sweeps remarkably clean at first, but nobody can
be certain beforehand how it will work in the end.
Russia is not Hungary, Hungary is not France, France is not
Britain, and therefore anyone who introduces a split in the International after the experience of some one nation displays criminal
narrow-mindedness.
Besides, what is Russia’s experience really worth? Who can
answer that? The Allied governments are afraid to let us enlighten
ourselves. But there are two things we do know.
First and foremost, that there was no prepared plan according to
which the revolution was accomplished by the present Russian Government. It developed according to the course of events. Lenin started
his attack on Kerensky by demanding a Constituent Assembly.
Events led him to suppress this Assembly. When the socialist revolution broke out in Russia no one thought the Soviets would take the
place in the government which they did.
496
V. I. L E N I N
Subsequently Lenin quite justly exhorted Hungary not to copy
Russia slavishly but to allow the Hungarian revolution to evolve freely
according to its own character.
The evolution and fluctuations of those experiments we are now
witnessing should on no account call forth a split in the International.
All socialist governments need the help and advice of the International. It is necessary that the International should watch their
experiences with an alert eye and an open mind.
I have just heard from a friend who recently saw Lenin that no
one is more free in his criticism of the Soviet Government than Lenin
himself.
* * *
If the post-war disorders and revolutions do not justify a split,
does the latter not find justification in the attitude which some
socialist factions took during the war? I frankly admit that here the
grounds may seem more justified. But if there really is some excuse for
split in the International, this question was at any rate presented
most unhappily at the Moscow Conference.
I am one of those who consider that the discussion at the Berne
Conference on who was responsible for the war was merely a concession to non-socialist public opinion.
At Berne it was not only impossible to adopt a decision on this
question that would be of some historical value (although it might
have some political value), but even the question itself was not
broached properly.
The condemnation of the German majority (a condemnation which
that majority fully deserved and with which I have very gladly associated myself) could not serve as an exposition of the origin of the war.
The Berne debate was not accompanied by a frank discussion of
the views held by other socialists concerning the war.
It produced no formula of conduct for socialists during a war.
All the International had said before then was that in a war of
national defence socialists must unite with the other parties.
Under these circumstances whom are we going to condemn?
Some of us knew that what the International decided meant
nothing and did not constitute a practical guide for action.
We knew that such a war would end in victory for imperialism
and, being neither pacifists in the usual sense of the word nor antipacifists, we pursued a policy which in our opinion was the only one
compatible with internationalism. But the International never
prescribed any such rule of conduct for us.
That is why the moment the war began the International collapsed.
It lost its authority and did not issue a single decision on the
basis of which we would now have the right to condemn those who
honestly carried out the resolutions of the international congresses.
In consequence, the attitude we should adopt today is the following: instead of parting ways on account of what has taken place, let
us create a really active International which will guard the socialist
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
497
movement during the period of revolution and reconstruction
which we have now entered.
We must restore our socialist principles. We must place our international socialist conduct on firm foundations.
If, however, it appears that we differ essentially on these principles, if we do not arrive at any agreement on the issues of freedom and
democracy, if our views on the conditions under which the proletariat
may take power are definitely at variance, if finally it turns out that
the war has infected some sections of the International with the virus
of imperialism, then a split is possible.
But I do not think there should be such a calamity.
That is why I regret the Moscow Manifesto as being premature,
to say the least, and certainly useless; and I hope that my French
comrades, upon whom as well as upon me during the sombre last four
years so much slander and misfortune has been heaped, will not, in
an outburst of impatience, be instrumental in breaking up international solidarity.
Otherwise their children will have to set up that solidarity once
more, if the proletariat is ever to rule the world.
J. Ramsay MacDonald
The author of this article, as the reader can see, tries to
prove that a split is unnecessary. However, its inevitability
follows from the very way the argument is presented by Ramsay MacDonald—that typical representative of the Second
International and worthy colleague of Scheidemann and
Kautsky, Vandervelde and Branting, and so on and so
forth.
Ramsay MacDonald’s article is a fine specimen of the
smooth, euphonious, hackneyed, apparently socialistic
phrases which have long served in all the advanced capitalist countries to conceal bourgeois policy within the workingclass movement.
I
Let us begin with what is least important but especially
characteristic. Like Kautsky (in his pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat), the author repeats the bourgeois
lie that no one in Russia foresaw the role of the Soviets,
that the Bolsheviks and I began to fight Kerensky only on
the issue of the Constituent Assembly.
That is a bourgeois lie. Actually, as early as April 4,
1917, the first day after my arrival in Petrograd, I presented
498
V. I. L E N I N
“theses” containing the demand for a Soviet, and not a
bourgeois-parliamentary, republic. I repeated this many
times under Kerensky in the press and at meetings. The
Bolshevik Party solemnly and officially announced this
in the decisions of its conference of April 29, 1917. Who
does not know this does not want to know the truth about
the socialist revolution in Russia. If one does not want
to understand that a bourgeois-parliamentary republic
with a Constituent Assembly is a step forward from the same
sort of republic without a Constituent Assembly, and that a
Soviet republic is two steps forward, one is merely closing
one’s eyes to the difference between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat.
To call oneself a socialist and not to see this difference
two years after the issue was raised in Russia and one and a
half years after the victory of the Soviet revolution in
Russia means stubbornly to remain completely captive to
“non-socialist public opinion”, that is to say, to the ideas
and the policy of the bourgeoisie.
A split with such people is necessary and inevitable,
for it is impossible to accomplish the socialist revolution
if you join hands with those who pull in the direction of
the bourgeoisie.
And if “leaders” like Ramsay MacDonald or Kautsky, etc.,
have refused to overcome even so very small a “difficulty”
as an acquaintance with the documents concerning the attitude
of the Bolsheviks toward Soviet power, concerning the way
this problem was posed before and after October 25 (November 7), 1917, would it not be ridiculous to expect such
people to be ready and able to overcome the incomparably
greater difficulties of the real struggle for a socialist revolution?
There are none so deaf as those who will not hear.
II
Let us pass on to the second untruth (from among the
countless untruths in which the whole article by Ramsay
MacDonald abounds, for in this article there are perhaps
more untruths than words). This untruth is probably the
most important one.
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
499
Ramsay MacDonald asserts that until the war of 1914-18
the International only said that “in a war of national
defence socialists must unite with the other parties”.
That is a monstrous, a glaring deviation from the truth.
Everybody knows that the Basle Manifesto of 1912 was
unanimously adopted by all socialists and that of all the
documents of the International it alone refers precisely to the
war between the British and German groups of imperialist predators, which in 1912 everybody clearly saw was in
preparation and which broke out in 1914. It was about this
war that the Basle Manifesto said three things which MacDonald now passes over in silence, thereby committing an
enormous crime against socialism and proving that with
people like him a split is necessary, because in fact they
serve the bourgeoisie and not the proletariat.
These three things are the following:
the war that threatens cannot be justified one whit as
being in the interest of national freedom;
in this war it would be a crime on the part of the workers
to shoot at one another;
the war leads to proletarian revolution.
Here you have the three basic, fundamental truths, by
“forgetting” which (though he put his signature to them
before the war) MacDonald in fact is going over to the
bourgeoisie against the proletariat and thereby proves
that a split is necessary.
The Communist International will not agree to unity
with parties which refuse to admit this truth and are incapable of demonstrating by their deeds their determination,
readiness and ability to bring these truths home to the
masses.
The Treaty of Versailles has proved even to the stupid
and blind, even to the mass of short-sighted people, that
the Entente was and is as bloody and filthy an imperialist
predator as Germany. Only hypocrites and liars could fail
to see this, people who deliberately conduct the policy of
the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement, direct agents
and henchmen of the bourgeoisie (labour lieutenants of the
capitalist class, * as the American Socialists say), or people
* These
words are in English in the original.—Ed.
500
V. I. L E N I N
who have so far succumbed to bourgeois ideas and bourgeois influence that they are socialists only in words, but in
deeds are petty bourgeois, philistines, toadies to the capitalists. The difference between the first and the second
category is important from the viewpoint of their personalities, i.e., for an appraisal of the Tom, Dick or Harry of the
social-chauvinists of all countries. For the politician, i.e.,
from the viewpoint of the relations among millions of
people, among the classes, this difference is not substantial.
Those socialists who during the war of 1914-18 failed to
understand that it was a criminal, reactionary, predatory,
imperialist war on both sides, are social-chauvinists, i.e.,
socialists in words and chauvinists in deeds; friends of the
working class in words, but in deeds lackeys of “their own”
national bourgeoisie, individuals who help to deceive the
people by depicting as “national”, “emancipatory”, “defensive”, “righteous” and so forth the war between the British
and German groups of imperialist predators, who are equally
filthy, selfish, blood-thirsty, criminal, reactionary.
Unity with the social-chauvinists is betrayal of the
revolution, betrayal of the proletariat, betrayal of socialism,
desertion to the bourgeoisie, because it is “unity” with the
national bourgeoisie of “one’s own” country against the unity
of the international revolutionary proletariat, is unity
with the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
The war of 1914-18 has definitely proved this. Let anyone
who does not understand this remain in the yellow Berne
International of traitor-socialists.
III
Ramsay MacDonald, with the amusing naïveté of a
“drawing-room” socialist who carelessly uses words without
at all understanding their serious significance, giving no
thought whatever to the fact that words commit one to deeds,
declares that in Berne “a concession to non-socialist public
opinion” was made.
Precisely! We regard the whole of the Berne International
as yellow, treacherous and perfidious because the whole
of its policy is a “concession” to the bourgeoisie.
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
501
Ramsay MacDonald knows perfectly well that we have
built the Third International and broken unreservedly
with the Second International because we became convinced
that it was hopeless, incorrigible, played the part of a
servant to imperialism, of a vehicle of bourgeois influence,
bourgeois lies and bourgeois corruption in the labour movement. If in desiring to discuss The Third International Ramsay MacDonald evades the substance of the matter, beats
about the bush, utters empty phrases and does not speak of
what should be spoken about, that is his fault and his
crime. For the proletariat needs the truth, and there is nothing more harmful to its cause than plausible, respectable,
petty-bourgeois lies.
The problem of imperialism and of its connection with
opportunism in the labour movement, with the betrayal of
the workers’ cause by labour leaders, was raised long ago,
very long ago.
For a period of forty years, from 1852 to 1892, Marx and
Engels constantly pointed to the fact that the upper stratum
of the British working class was becoming increasingly
bourgeois as a consequence of the country’s peculiar economic conditions (colonies, monopoly of the world market,
etc.). 77 In the seventies of last century Marx won himself
the honourable hatred of the despicable heroes of the Berne
International trend of those days, of the opportunists and
reformists, for branding many of the British trade union
leaders as men who had sold themselves to the bourgeoisie
or were in its pay for services rendered to its class from
within the labour movement.
During the Anglo-Boer War, the Anglo-Saxon press quite
clearly raised the problem of imperialism as the latest (and
last) stage of capitalism. If my memory serves me right,
it was none other than Ramsay MacDonald who then resigned
from the Fabian Society, that prototype of the Berne
International, that nursery and model of opportunism,
which Engels describes, with the power, brilliancy and
truth of genius, in his correspondence with Sorge. 78 “Fabian
imperialism”—such was the common expression employed
at that time in British socialist literature.
If Ramsay MacDonald has forgotten this, all the worse
for him.
502
V. I. L E N I N
“Fabian imperialism” and “social-imperialism” are one
and the same thing: socialism in words, imperialism in
deeds, the growth of opportunism into imperialism. This
has now become, during the war of 1914-18 and since, a
universal fact. The failure to understand it shows the great
blindness of the Berne yellow International, and is its
great crime. Opportunism, or reformism, inevitably had to
grow into a phenomenon of world-wide importance, socialist imperialism, or social-chauvinism, because imperialism brought to the fore a handful of very rich, advanced
nations, engaged in plundering the whole world, and
thereby enabled the bourgeoisie of those countries, out
of their monopolist superprofits (imperialism is monopoly
capitalism), to bribe the upper strata of the working class.
Only ignoramuses or hypocrites who deceive the workers
by repeating platitudes about capitalism and in this way
cover up the bitter truth that a whole trend in socialism has
gone over to the imperialist bourgeoisie could fail to see
the economic inevitability of this development under
imperialism.
And from this fact two indisputable conclusions emerge.
First conclusion: the Berne International is in fact,
from the angle of its real historical and political role,
and irrespective of the good will and pious wishes of
particular members of it, an organisation of agents of international imperialism operating within the labour movement, permeating that movement with bourgeois influence,
bourgeois ideas, bourgeois lies, and bourgeois corruption.
In countries where democratic parliamentary culture is
of long standing, the bourgeoisie has learned splendidly
to use deception, bribery and flattery in their most subtle
forms as well as violence. Not for nothing have the “luncheons” given to British “labour leaders” (i.e., lieutenants
of the bourgeoisie whose duty is to fool the workers) have
acquired notoriety; Engels in his day spoke about them. 79
To the same category of facts belongs the “charming” reception given by M. Clemenceau to the traitor-socialist
Merrheim, the courteous receptions given by Entente ministers to the leaders of the Berne International, and so on
and so forth. “You train ’em, and we buy ’em,” a clever
capitalist, an Englishwoman, said to Mr. Social-imperial-
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
503
ist Hyndman, who related in his memoirs how this lady, a
person shrewder than all the leaders of the Berne International put together, appraised the “labours” of the socialist
intellectuals in training workers to become socialist leaders.
During the war, when the Vanderveldes, Brantings and
the whole gang of traitors organised “international” conferences, the French bourgeois newspapers were bitingly
scornful, and rightly so. They said: “These Vanderveldes seem
to be suffering from a sort of tic. Just as those who suffer from
tic cannot utter a couple of phrases without strangely twitching the muscles of the face, so the Vanderveldes cannot make
a political speech without repeating, parrot-like, the words
internationalism, socialism, international working-class
solidarity, proletarian revolution, etc. Let them repeat any
sacramental formulas they like so long as they help to lead
the workers by the nose and serve us, the capitalists, in
waging the imperialist war and enslaving the workers.”
Sometimes the British and French bourgeoisie are very
clever and excellently appraise the servile role played by the
Berne International.
Martov wrote somewhere: “You Bolsheviks hurl abuse
at the Berne International but ‘your own’ friend Loriot is
a member of it.”
That is the argument of a rogue; for everybody knows
that Loriot is openly, honestly and heroically fighting for
the Third International. In 1902, when Zubatov organised
meetings of workers in Moscow in order to hoodwink them
with “police socialism”, the worker Babushkin, whom I had
known since 1894 when he was in my study circle for workers
in St. Petersburg, and who was one of the best and most
devoted workers of the Iskra trend, one of the best leaders
of the revolutionary proletariat, and was shot in 1906 by
Rennenkampf in Siberia—Babushkin used to attend the
Zubatov meetings in order to fight Zubatovism and to withdraw the workers from its clutches. Babushkin had no more
connection with Zubatov than Loriot with Berne.
IV
The second conclusion is that the Third, Communist,
International has been formed so as to prevent “socialists”
from confining themselves to the verbal recognition of
504
V. I. L E N I N
revolution, examples of which are provided by Ramsay MacDonald in his article. Verbal recognition of revolution, which
in fact concealed a thoroughly opportunist, reformist, nationalist, petty-bourgeois policy, was the basic sin of the
Second International, and we are waging a life-and-death
struggle against this evil.
When it is said that the Second International died after
suffering shameful bankruptcy, one must be able to understand what this means. It means that opportunism, reformism, petty-bourgeois socialism went bankrupt and died.
For the Second International rendered historic service, it has
achievements to its credit that are ε î ς Ä ε î (everlasting) and
which the class-conscious worker will never renounce—the
creation of mass working-class organisations—co-operative,
trade union and political—the utilisation of the bourgeois
parliamentary system, and of all the institutions in general
of bourgeois democracy, etc.
In order to really defeat opportunism, which caused the
shameful death of the Second International, in order to really
assist the revolution, the approach of which even Ramsay
MacDonald is obliged to admit, it is necessary:
Firstly, to conduct all propaganda and agitation from the
viewpoint of revolution as opposed to reforms, systematically
explaining to the masses, both theoretically and practically,
at every step of parliamentary, trade union, co-operative,
etc., activity, that they are diametrically opposed. Under
no circumstances to refrain (save in special cases, by way of
exception) from utilising the parliamentary system and all
the “liberties” of bourgeois democracy; not to reject reforms,
but to regard them only as a by-product of the revolutionary
class struggle of the proletariat. Not a single party affiliated
to the Berne International meets these requirements. Not
a single one of them shows that it has any idea of how to conduct its propaganda and agitation as a whole, explaining
how reform differs from revolution; nor do they know how
to train both the Party and the masses’ unswervingly for
revolution.
Secondly, legal work must be combined with illegal work.
The Bolsheviks have always taught this, and did so with
particular insistence during the war of 1914-18. The heroes
of despicable opportunism ridiculed this and smugly extolled
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
505
the “legality”, “democracy”, “liberty” of the West-European
countries, republics, etc. Now, however, only out-and-out
swindlers, who deceive the workers with phrases, can deny
that the Bolsheviks proved to be right. In every single country in the world, even the most advanced and “freest” of the
bourgeois republics, bourgeois terror reigns, and there is
no such thing as freedom to carry on agitation for the socialist revolution, to carry on propaganda and organisational
work precisely in this sense. The party which to this day has
not admitted this under the rule of the bourgeoisie and does
not carry on systematic, all-sided illegal work in spite of
the laws of the bourgeoisie and of the bourgeois parliaments
is a party of traitors and scoundrels who deceive the people
by their verbal recognition of revolution. The place for such
parties is in the yellow, Berne International. There is no
room for them in the Communist International.
Thirdly, unswerving and ruthless war must be waged for
the expulsion from the labour movement of all those opportunist leaders who exposed themselves both before and
particularly during the war, both in the political sphere
and particularly in the trade unions, and the co-operatives.
The theory of “neutrality” is a false and despicable evasion,
which helped the bourgeoisie to capture the masses in 1914-18.
Parties which stand for revolution in words but in deeds
fail to carry on undeviating work to spread the influence
of precisely the revolutionary and only of the revolutionary
party in every sort of mass organisation of the workers are
parties of traitors.
Fourthly, there must be no toleration of the verbal condemnation of imperialism while no real revolutionary struggle is waged for the liberation of the colonies (and dependent
nations) from one’s own imperialist bourgeoisie. That is
hypocrisy. That is the policy of the agents of the bourgeoisie
in the labour movement (labour lieutenants of the capitalist class). The British, French, Dutch, Belgian, or other
party which is hostile to imperialism in words but in deeds
does not wage a revolutionary struggle within “its own”
colonies for the overthrow of “its own” bourgeoisie, does not
systematically assist the revolutionary work which has already
begun everywhere in the colonies, and does not send arms
506
V. I. L E N I N
and literature to the revolutionary parties in the colonies,
is a party of scoundrels and traitors.
Fifthly, the extreme hypocrisy of the parties of the Berne
International is to be seen in their typical recognition of
revolution in words while they flaunt before the workers
high-sounding phrases about recognising revolution but as far
as deeds are concerned go no farther than adopting a purely
reformist attitude to those beginnings, elements, manifestations of the growth of revolution in all mass actions which
break bourgeois laws and go beyond the bounds of all
legality, as for example, mass strikes, street demonstrations,
soldiers’ protests, meetings among the troops, leaflet
distribution in barracks, camps, etc.
If you ask any hero of the Berne International whether
his party does such systematic work, he will answer you either
with evasive phrases to conceal that such work is not being
done—his party lacks the organisations and the machinery
for doing it, is incapable of doing it—or with declamatory
speeches against “putschism” (pyrotechnics), “anarchism”,
etc. And it is that which constitutes the betrayal of the working class by the Berne International, its actual desertion to
the camp of the bourgeoisie.
All the-scoundrelly leaders of the Berne International take
great pains to affirm their “sympathy” for revolution in
general, and for the Russian revolution in particular. But
only hypocrites or simpletons can fail to understand that
the particularly rapid successes of the revolution in Russia
are due to the many years’ work by the revolutionary party
in the ways indicated; for years illegal machinery was
systematically built up to direct demonstrations and strikes,
to conduct work among the troops; a detailed study was made
of methods; illegal literature was issued summing up experience acquired and educating the whole Party in the idea
that revolution was necessary; leaders of the masses were
trained for such events, etc., etc.
V
The most profound and radical differences, which sum up
all that has been said above and explain the inevitability
of an irreconcilable theoretical and practical political strug-
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
507
gle of the revolutionary proletariat against the Berne International, centre around two issues—transformation of the
imperialist war into civil war, and the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
The best proof that the Berne International is held captive by bourgeois ideology is its failure to understand (or
not desiring to understand, or pretending not to understand)
the imperialist character of the war of 1914-18 and the
inevitability of its transformation into civil war between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie in all the advanced countries.
When the Bolsheviks, as far back as November 1914,
pointed to this inevitability, the philistines of all countries
retorted with stupid sneers, and among these philistines
were all the leaders of the Berne International. Now, the
transformation of the imperialist war into civil war has become a fact in a number of countries, not only in Russia
but also in Finland, in Hungary, in Germany, and even in
neutral Switzerland, and that civil war is maturing is seen,
felt, and sensed in all advanced countries without exception.
To ignore this problem now (as Ramsay MacDonald does)
or to try to evade the issue of the inevitability of civil war
with sentimental conciliatory phrases (as Messrs. Kautsky
and Co. do) is tantamount to direct betrayal of the proletariat, equivalent to actual desertion to the bourgeoisie. Because the real political leaders of the bourgeoisie have long
understood the inevitability of civil war and are making
excellent, thoughtful and systematic preparations for it
and are strengthening their positions in anticipation of it.
The bourgeoisie of the whole world are exerting all their
strength, enormous energy, intellect and determination,
hesitating at no crime, and condemning whole countries to
famine and complete extinction, in the preparations they
are making to crush the proletariat in the impending civil
war. The heroes of the Berne International, on the other hand,
like simpletons, or hypocritical parsons, or pedantic professors, chant their old, worn-out, threadbare reformist song!
No spectacle could be more revolting or more disgusting!
The Kautskys and MacDonalds continue to frighten the
capitalists with the menace of revolution, to scare the
bourgeoisie with the menace of civil war in order to obtain
concessions from them and get them to agree to follow the
508
V. I. L E N I N
reformist path. This is what all the writings, all the philosophy, all the policy of the entire Berne International amount
to. We saw that miserable lackey’s trick played in Russia
in 1905 by the liberals (Constitutional-Democrats), and in
1917-19 by the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.
The servile souls of the Berne International never think of
inculcating upon the masses the idea of the inevitability and
necessity of defeating the bourgeoisie in civil war, of pursuing
a policy wholly dedicated to this aim, of elucidating, raising
and solving all problems from this, and only from this, point
of view. That is why our sole aim should be once and for
all to push the incorrigible reformists, i.e., nine-tenths of
the leaders of the Berne International, into the cesspool of
the hirelings of the bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie needs hirelings who enjoy the trust of
a section of the working class, whitewash and prettify the
bourgeoisie with talk about the reformist path being possible,
throw dust in the eyes of the people by such talk, and divert
the people from revolution by giving glowing descriptions
of the charms and possibilities of the reformist path.
All the writings of the Kautskys, and of our Mensheviks
and Socialist-Revolutionaries, boil down to such whitewashing and to the whining of the cowardly philistine who
fears revolution.
We cannot repeat here in detail the main economic causes
that have made the revolutionary (and only the revolutionary) path inevitable, and have made impossible any solution other than civil war to the problems history has placed
on the order of the day. Volumes must and will be written
about this. If the Kautskys and other leaders of the Berne
International do not understand this, all that can be said
is ignorance is closer to the truth than prejudice.
Now, after the war, ignorant but sincere men of labour
and supporters of the working people, understand the inevitability of revolution, of civil war and of the dictatorship
of the proletariat far more easily than do the gentlemen
stuffed with most learned reformist prejudices, the Kautskys,
MacDonalds, Vanderveldes, Brantings, Turatis, and tutti
quanti. *
* All
the others.—Ed.
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
509
As one of the particularly striking confirmations of the
phenomenon observable everywhere, on a mass scale, namely,
that of the growth of revolutionary consciousness among the
masses, we may take the novels of Henri Barbusse, Le Feu
(Under Fire) and Clarté (Light). The former has already
been translated into all languages, and in France 230,000
copies have been sold. The transformation of an absolutely
ignorant rank-and-filer, utterly crushed by philistine ideas
and prejudices, into a revolutionary under the influence of
the war is depicted with extraordinary power, talent and
truthfulness.
The mass of proletarians and semi-proletarians are on our
side and are coming over to us by leaps and bounds. The
Berne International is a General Staff without an army, and
will collapse like a house of cards if thoroughly exposed to the
masses.
The name of Karl Liebknecht was used in the whole of
the Entente bourgeois press during the war in order to deceive
the masses; the French and British imperialist pirates
and plunderers were shown as sympathising with this hero,
with this “sole honest German”, as they said.
Now the heroes of the Berne International belong to the
same organisation as the Scheidemanns who engineered the
murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the Scheidemanns who fulfilled the role of worker-executioners and
rendered hangman’s service to the bourgeoisie. In words—
hypocritical attempts to “condemn” the Scheidemanns (as
if “condemning” makes any difference!). In deeds—belonging
to the same organisation as the murderers do.
In 1907 the late Harry Quelch was expelled by the German
Government from Stuttgart for describing a gathering of
European diplomats as a “thieves’ supper”. 80 The leaders of
the Berne International are not only participants in a thieves’
supper, but even in a vile assassins’ supper.
They will not escape the justice of the revolutionary
workers.
VI
Ramsay MacDonald disposes of the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a couple of words as if it were
a subject for a discussion on freedom and democracy.
510
V. I. L E N I N
But it is not. It is time to act, it is too late for discussions.
The most dangerous thing about the Berne International
is its verbal recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
These people are capable of recognising everything, of signing everything, as long as they can keep at the head of the
labour movement. Kautsky now says that he is not opposed
to the dictatorship of the proletariat! The French socialchauvinists and Centrists put their names to resolutions in
favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat!
But they deserve not the slightest confidence.
It is not verbal recognition that is needed, but a complete
rupture in deeds with the policy of reformism, with prejudices about bourgeois freedom and bourgeois democracy, the
pursuit in deeds of the policy of revolutionary class struggle.
Attempts are being made to recognise the dictatorship
of the proletariat in words, in order to smuggle in along
with it the “will of the majority”, “universal suffrage” (this
is exactly what Kautsky does), bourgeois parliamentarism,
rejection of the idea that the entire bourgeois machinery
of state must be destroyed, smashed, blown up. These new
evasions, new loopholes of reformism, are most of all to
be feared.
The dictatorship of the proletariat would be impossible
if the majority of the population did not consist of proletarians and semi-proletarians. Kautsky and Co. try to falsify
this truth by arguing that “the vote of the majority is
required for the dictatorship of the proletariat to be recognised as “valid”.
Comical pedants! They fail to understand that voting within the bounds, institutions and customs of bourgeois parliamentarism is a part of the bourgeois state machinery that
has to be broken and smashed from top to bottom in order
to give effect to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in order
to pass from bourgeois democracy to proletarian democracy.
They fail to understand that when history places the
dictatorship of the proletariat on the order of the day it is
not voting, but civil war that decides all serious political
problems.
They fail to understand that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the rule of one class, which takes into its hands the
entire machinery of the new state, and which defeats the
THE TASKS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL
511
bourgeoisie and neutralises the whole of the petty bourgeoisie—the peasantry, the lower middle class and the intelligentsia.
The Kautskys and MacDonalds recognise the class struggle
in words, but in deeds forget about it at the most decisive
moment in the history of the struggle for the emancipation
of the proletariat—at the moment when, having seized state
power, and supported by the semi-proletariat, the proletariat with the aid of this power continues the class struggle
until classes are abolished.
Like real philistines, the leaders of the Berne International
repeat bourgeois-democratic catchwords about freedom,
equality and democracy, but fail to see that they are repeating fragments of ideas concerning the free and equal commodity owner, fail to understand that the proletariat needs
a state not for the “freedom”, but for the suppression of its
enemy, the exploiter, the capitalist.
The freedom and equality of the commodity owner are as
dead as capitalism. And the Kautskys and MacDonalds will
never be able to revive it.
The proletariat needs the abolition of classes—such is
the real content of proletarian democracy, of proletarian
freedom (freedom from the capitalist, from commodity
exchange), of proletarian equality (not equality of classes—
that is the banality which the Kautskys, Vanderveldes and
MacDonalds slip into—but the equality of the working people
who overthrow capital and capitalism).
So long as classes exist the freedom and equality of classes
is a bourgeois deception. The proletariat takes power,
becomes the ruling class, smashes bourgeois parliamentarism
and bourgeois democracy, suppresses the bourgeoisie, suppresses all the attempts of all other classes to return to capitalism, gives real freedom and equality to the working people
(which is practicable only when the private ownership of
the means of production has been abolished), and gives them
not only the “right to”, but the real use of, what has been
taken from the bourgeoisie.
He who fails to understand this content of the dictatorship
of the proletariat (or what is the same thing, Soviet power,
or proletarian democracy) is misusing the term dictatorship
of the proletariat.
512
V. I. L E N I N
I cannot here develop these ideas in greater detail; I have
done so in The State and Revolution and in the pamphlet
The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. I
shall conclude by dedicating these remarks to the delegates
to the Lucerne Congress 81 (August 10, 1919) of the Berne
International.
July 14, 1919
Published in August 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the manuscript
513
SPEECH ON THE DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN SITUATION
DELIVERED TO A RED ARMY CONFERENCE HELD
IN KHODYNSKOYE CAMP
JULY 15, 1919
BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT
Lenin’s appearance on the platform was greeted by a storm
of applause. Lenin said that they were living at an important
moment—the concluding stage of the imperialist war. After
the defeat of Germany in November 1918, all the Allies had
been busy drawing up peace terms and saying that German
imperialism was dead and the peoples had been liberated.
The National Assembly had ratified the Treaty and peace had
been established after a war in which ten million people had
died and twenty million had been maimed for gain, for
purposes of plunder.
After the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles the Bolsheviks were proved to have been right—the Treaty of
Versailles was worse than the Treaty of Brest that Soviet
Russia had at one time concluded with moribund German
imperialism. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the
day of the Treaty of Versailles would be the day of defeat
for British, American and any other imperialism. Immediately the Treaty had been signed the imperialists became busy
dividing up the colonies; Britain had taken Persia; Syria
and Turkey were being carved up, and the eyes of the workers
in capitalist countries had been opened to the fact that the
war had been a war between predators. Strange as it might
have seemed, information had been received to the effect
that Prince Lvov, a former member of Kerensky’s Provisional
Government who was then in Paris, was demanding that
514
V. I. L E N I N
the Allies give Constantinople and the Straits to Russia on
the grounds that Russia had fought in the war only for their
sake—naturally this naïve demand received an answer to
the effect that they would be given only to old, powerful
Russia.
In order to hoodwink the people, the French imperialists
had appointed July 14, the anniversary of the capture of
the Bastille, as the day on which to celebrate victory over
Germany. The French workers, however, had not taken
the bait, and on July 14 café and restaurant employees had
declared a strike—on the day on which the streets are usually
filled with carnival crowds and people dancing all the cafés
and restaurants were closed and there was no celebration.
British, French and Italian workers had declared a general
strike for July 21 82 and one could say that for France and
Britain the Treaty of Versailles would end with a defeat of
the capitalists and a victory of the proletariat in the same
way as the Treaty of Brest had for Germany. The failure
of the first Entente offensive in the South of Russia and of
the second offensive in Siberia were an indication of this
movement of the proletariat in the West, and showed that
the proletariat were for Soviet Russia.
The peasantry of Siberia and the Ukraine, who had formerly given their support to Kolchak and Denikin had turned
against them after imposition of taxes, wholesale plunder
and violence. It had become clear that Kolchak was finished
and that victory over Denikin was near; this victory would
end with the victory of the proletariat in the West, for the
working-class movement in the West was acquiring a Bolshevik character, and although Russia and her Soviet power
had at first been alone, she had later been joined by Soviet
Hungary. Events were moving towards the transfer of
power to the Workers’ Councils in Germany and the day
was not far distant when all Europe would be united in a
single Soviet republic that would remove the rule of the
capitalists throughout the world. (Prolonged applause.)
Published in Vecherniye Izvestia
Moskovskogo Soveta No. 2 9 3 ,
July 17, 1 9 1 9
Published according to
the newspaper text
515
ANSWERS
TO AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S QUESTIONS 83
I answer the five questions put to me on condition of the
fulfilment of the written promise that my answers will be
printed in full in over a hundred newspapers in the United
States of America.
1. The governmental programme of the Soviet Government
was not a reformist, but a revolutionary one. Reforms are
concessions obtained from a ruling class that retains its
rule. Revolution is the overthrow of the ruling class. Reformist programmes, therefore, usually consist of many items
of partial significance. Our revolutionary programme consisted properly of one general item—removal of the yoke of
the landowners and capitalists, the overthrow of their power
and the emancipation of the working people from those
exploiters. This programme we have never changed. Some
partial measures aimed at the realisation of the programme
have often been subjected to change; their enumeration
would require a whole volume. I will only mention that
there is one other general point in our governmental programme which has, perhaps, given rise to the greatest number of changes of partial measures. That point is—the
suppression of the exploiters’ resistance. After the Revolution of October 25 (November 7), 1917 we did not close down
even the bourgeois newspapers and there was no mention of
terror at all. We released not only many of Kerensky’s
ministers, but even Krasnov who had made war on us. It was
only after the exploiters, i.e., the capitalists, had begun
developing their resistance that we began to crush that resistance systematically, applying even terror. This was the
proletariat’s response to such actions of the bourgeoisie
516
V. I. L E N I N
as the conspiracy with the capitalists of Germany, Britain,
Japan, America and France to restore the rule of the exploiters in Russia, the bribery of the Czechoslovaks with AngloFrench money, the bribery of Mannerheim, Denikin and
others with German and French money, etc. One of the latest
conspiracies leading to “a change”—to put it precisely,
leading to increased terror against the bourgeoisie in Petrograd—was that of the bourgeoisie, acting jointly with the
Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries; their conspiracy
concerned the surrender of Petrograd, the seizure of Krasnaya
Gorka by officer-conspirators, the bribing by British and
French capitalists of employees of the Swiss Embassy and
of many Russian employees, etc.
2. The activities of our Soviet Republic in Afghanistan,
India and other Moslem countries outside Russia are the same
as our activities among the numerous Moslems and other
non-Russian peoples inside Russia. We have made it possible, for instance, for the Bashkirian people to establish an
autonomous republic within Russia, we are doing everything
possible to help the independent, free development of every
nationality, the growth and dissemination of literature in
the native language of each of them, we are translating and
propagandising our Soviet Constitution which has the misfortune to be more pleasing to more than a thousand million
inhabitants of the earth who belong to colonial, dependent,
oppressed, underprivileged nations than the constitutions of
the West-European and American bourgeois-“democratic”
states that perpetuate private property in land and capital,
i.e., strengthen the oppression of the working people of their
own countries and of hundreds of millions of people in the
colonies of Asia, Africa, etc., by a small number of
“civilised” capitalists.
3. As far as the United States and Japan are concerned,
our first political objective is to repulse their shameless,
criminal, predatory invasion of Russia that serves only to
enrich their capitalists. We have many times made solemn
proposals of peace to both these countries, but they have not
even answered us and continue to make war on us, helping
Denikin and Kolchak, plundering Murmansk and Archangel,
ruining and laying waste to, especially, Eastern Siberia,
where the Russian peasants are offering heroic resistance to
ANSWERS TO AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S QUESTIONS
517
the capitalist bandits of Japan and the United States of
America.
We have one further political and economic objective
in respect of all peoples—including those of the United
States and Japan—fraternal alliance with the workers and
all working people of all countries without exception.
4. We have, on many occasions, given a precise, clear and
written exposition of the terms upon which we agree to
conclude peace with Kolchak, Denikin and Mannerheim—
for instance to Bullitt 84 who conducted negotiations with us
(and with me personally in Moscow) on behalf of the United
States Government, in a letter to Nansen, 85 etc. It is not
our fault that the governments of the United States and other
countries are afraid to publish those documents in full and
that they hide the truth from the people. I will mention only
our basic condition; we are prepared to pay all debts to
France and other countries provided there is a real peace
and not peace in words alone, i.e., if it is formally signed
and ratified by the governments of Great Britain, France, the
United States, Japan and Italy—Denikin, Kolchak, Mannerheim and the others being mere pawns in the hands of those
governments.
5. More than anything else I should like to state the
following to the American public:
Compared to feudalism, capitalism was an historical
advance along the road of “liberty”, “equality”, “democracy”
and “civilisation”. Nevertheless capitalism was, and remains,
a system of wage-slavery, of the enslavement of millions of
working people, workers and peasants, by an insignificant
minority of modern slave-owners, landowners and capitalists. Bourgeois democracy, as compared to feudalism, has
changed the form of this economic slavery, has created a
brilliant screen for it but has not, and could not, change
its essence. Capitalism and bourgeois democracy are wageslavery.
The gigantic progress of technology in general, and of
means of transport in particular, and the tremendous growth
of capital and banks have resulted in capitalism becoming
mature and overmature. It has outlived itself. It has become
the most reactionary hindrance to human progress. It has
become reduced to the absolute power of a handful of
518
V. I. L E N I N
millionaires and multimillionaires who send whole nations
into a bloodbath to decide whether the German or the AngloFrench group of plunderers is to obtain the spoils of imperialism, power over the colonies, financial “spheres of
influence” or “mandates to rule”, etc.
During the war of 1914-18 tens of millions of people were
killed or mutilated for that reason and for that reason alone.
Knowledge of this truth is spreading with indomitable force
and rapidity among the working people of all countries,
the more so because the war has everywhere caused unparalleled ruin, and because interest on war debts has to be
paid everywhere, even by the “victor” nations. What is this
interest? It is a tribute of thousands of millions to the millionaire gentlemen who were kind enough to allow tens of
millions of workers and peasants to kill and maim one
another to settle the question of the division of profits by
the capitalists.
The collapse of capitalism is inevitable. The revolutionary
consciousness of the masses is everywhere growing; there are
thousands of signs of this. One small sign, unimportant,
but impressive to the man in the street, is the novels written
by Henri Barbusse (Le Feu, Clarté) who was a peaceful,
modest, law-abiding petty bourgeois, a philistine, a man in
the street, when he went to the war.
The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, can at “best” put off the
victory of socialism in one country or another at the cost of
slaughtering further hundreds of thousands of workers and
peasants. But they cannot save capitalism. The Soviet
Republic has come to take the place of capitalism, the
Republic which gives power to the working people and only
to the working people, which entrusts the proletariat with
the guidance of their liberation, which abolishes private
property in land, factories and other means of production,
because this private property is the source of the exploitation of the many by the few, the source of mass poverty,
the source of predatory wars between nations, wars that
enrich only the capitalists.
The victory of the world Soviet republic is certain.
A brief illustration in conclusion: the American bourgeoisie are deceiving the people by boasting of the liberty,
equality and democracy of their country. But neither this
ANSWERS TO AN AMERICAN JOURNALIST’S QUESTIONS
519
nor any other bourgeoisie nor any government in the world
can accept, it is afraid to accept, a contest with our government on the basis of real liberty, equality and democracy;
let us suppose that an agreement ensured our government
and any other government freedom to exchange ... pamphlets
published in the name of the government in any language
and containing the text of the laws of the given country, the
text of its constitution, and an explanation of its superiority
over the others.
Not one bourgeois government in the world would dare
conclude such a peaceful, civilised, free, equal, democratic
treaty with us.
Why? Because all of them, with the exception of Soviet
governments, keep in power by the oppression and deception
of the masses. But the great war of 1914-18 exposed the
great deception.
Lenin
July 20, 1919
Pravda No. 1 6 2 ,
July 2 5 , 1919
Published according to
the Pravda text
520
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
SPEECH AT A MOSCOW CONFERENCE OF FACTORY COMMITTEES
TRADE UNIONS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF THE MOSCOW
CENTRAL WORKERS’ CO - OPERATIVE
JULY 30, 1919
(Applause.) Comrades, I should like to give you a brief,
summarised explanation of the food situation and the war
situation. I expect that you are all familiar with the main
facts in these spheres and my job seems to be to throw some
light on the significance of those facts.
At this very moment when you have to settle problems of
the co-operatives we are experiencing a moment of difficulty
similar to that of last summer, especially in regard to food.
You know that our food policy has been a great success
during the past year as compared with that of the previous
year. It is hardly likely that we can measure the success
of our Soviet activities in other fields as accurately as we
can in the field of food supplies. During the first year of
Soviet power—it included the last period of the Kerensky
regime—state procurements amounted to only 30 million
poods. In the following year we procured 107 million poods
despite a worse war situation and worse conditions of access
to the best grain-growing regions, since Siberia, the Ukraine
and the greater part of the distant South were out of reach.
Despite this our grain procurements were, as you see,
trebled. Viewed from the standpoint of the food supply apparatus, this was an important success, but from the standpoint
of actual food supplies for the non-agricultural districts it
is very little; when the food conditions of the non-agricultural
population, especially those of the urban working popula-
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
521
tion, were given a thorough study, it was found that this
spring and summer the urban worker obtained about a half
his food from the Commissariat of Food and had to buy the
rest on the open market, at Sukharevka, and from the
profiteers; furthermore, the first half accounts for one-tenth
of the worker’s expenditure on food, while for the second
half he has to pay nine-tenths. The profiteering gentry, as
is to be expected, get nine times as much out of the worker
as the state does for grain procured. If we examine the exact
figures of our food situation we shall have to admit that we are
standing with one foot in the old capitalism, that we have
clambered only half-way out of that morass, out of that swamp
of profiteering, on to the road of genuine socialist grain procurement, where grain ceases to be a commodity, ceases to
be the object of profiteering, the object of and reason for
squabbles, for struggle and for the impoverishment of the
many. As you see very little has been done insofar as concerns the needs of the non-agricultural and working-class
population, but you have only to imagine the difficult conditions under which the work had to be done, with
the Civil War going on, when the greater part of the
grain-growing regions was not in our hands, to realise
that the food supply apparatus has been built up at
unusually high speed. I think that everybody will agree
with me that in this respect the organisational task, the
task of collecting grain from the peasantry in a non-capitalist manner has been an extremely difficult one that cannot
be carried out by any change of institutions—to say nothing
of a change of government—because it is a task that requires
organisational changes, it requires the reorganisation of
the basis of farm life that has been built up in the course
of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. If, in conditions of
absolute peace, we were to be given, say, five years to build
up an organisational apparatus that would be capable of
gathering all the grain into the hands of the state and keeping it out of the hands of profiteers, we would say that such
speed of social and economic reorganisation is something
unprecedented, something unheard of. If we, however, have
been able to solve half the problem in less than two years
we have done a lot. This is indisputable proof that Soviet
power has taken the right line on the food problem, the most
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V. I. L E N I N
difficult and burdensome of problems, and is on the right
road. In any case, I can tell you that Soviet power has decided with the greatest firmness to continue only in this way
and not to be put off by the waverings, doubts and criticisms
and, sometimes, even the despair we see around us. It is no
wonder that we witness the most terrible, tormenting
despair among people in the hungry places. It is no wonder,
because the figures I have quoted on the food obtained by
workers in the non-agricultural and urban regions show
that they are dependent on profiteers, on chance, and so on,
for half their food.
You know that food profiteering in our country has taken
on the character of a fierce struggle and sheer plunder on the
part of those who have had an opportunity of getting produce to the market. It is not surprising that we meet with
despair among those who have gone under in this savage
struggle between the profiteers and the hungry. It is obvious
that under prevailing conditions, when the railways are working badly, when typical of the chief grain-growing districts
is what is happening in the Ukraine, where we have not
succeeded in getting an apparatus going, where the remnants
of guerrilla methods prevent any possibility of organisational
work, where the population has not yet been able to abandon
guerrilla methods—obviously all this is to the advantage
of Denikin who has scored his easiest victories there, and
makes it more difficult for us to make use of the rich grain
markets where there are stocks of grain that could easily get
us out of our difficulties. I repeat, that under these circumstances it is no wonder that all around we meet expressions
of despair from those who have suffered the greatest loss in
this battle for bread. If we take the development of Soviet
work in its totality and not in individual cases, and compare what was provided by Soviet power with what was
provided by the free market, we shall have to admit that
the half of the food supply business in the hands of the
profiteers is still the source of fierce oppression and the most
fantastic, most disgraceful, absolutely uncontrolled profit
for the speculators, and this in circumstances when there
are, on the one hand, hungry people, and, on the other
hand, opportunities for some people to make a profit—it is
a source of the most infamous corruption.
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
523
It can be understood that people who are unable to grasp
this process in all its aspects should, in many cases, instead
of thinking about how to solve this new problem in the struggle against capitalism—the organised procurement of grain
at fixed prices due to confidence in the workers’ state—instead
of giving thought to this they say to us, “Look, if the worker
spends nine-tenths of his money on Sukharevka that shows
that you exist only owing to food profiteers and speculators.
And so you have to conform to it.” We sometimes hear this
from people who think they have their wits about them and
have a profound understanding of events. Actually they are
indulging in sophistry. The experience of the revolution
shows that changes in the form of government are not difficult, that it is possible to oust the ruling class of landowners and capitalists in a short time, if the revolution develops successfully it may be done in a few weeks, but the reorganisation of the fundamental conditions of economic life,
the struggle against habits that in the course of hundreds and
thousands of years have become second nature to every petty
proprietor is something that requires many long years of
persistent organisational work after the exploiting classes
have been completely overthrown. And when they point
out that alongside us Sukharevka is thriving, and tell us
how much Soviet power depends on that market, we ask them
what they are surprised at. Could the problem possibly have
been solved in a period of less than two years with Russia
cut off from the best agricultural regions? Those people who
most of all object from the standpoint of principle and who
even at times assert that they are speaking from a socialist
angle—but God save us from such socialism—accuse the
Bolsheviks of utopianism and adventurism because the Bolsheviks said that they could and should not only smash the
monarchy and landed proprietorship in a revolutionary manner, but they could and should smash the capitalist class as
well, and sweep them and the remnants of the imperialist
war away so as to clear the ground for organisational work
which will require a lengthy period of working-class rule,
the only form of rule capable of giving a lead to the peasant
masses. Those people who accuse us of utopianism because
we recognised the possibility of smashing the capitalist and
landowning classes in a revolutionary manner, are themselves
524
V. I. L E N I N
imposing a utopian task upon us by wanting the organisational questions of the new socialist system and the struggle
against old customs that cannot be overcome by any abolition
of institutions—by wanting these problems settled at a
moment when our hands are tied by the Civil War and wanting them settled in a period too brief for their solution by any
earthly forces.
Yes, it is the food policy that demonstrates most clearly
that the struggle between socialism and capitalism in its
latest form is being fought out right here where we not only
have to overcome old institutions, not only the landowners
and capitalists, but all the habits and economic conditions,
created by capitalism, affecting millions of petty proprietors. We have to make reason stronger than their prejudices.
Any peasant who is at all class-conscious will agree that
freedom to trade in grain and the sale of grain on the open
market when the people are hungry means war between
people and the enrichment of the profiteers, while for the
masses of the people it means hunger. This class-consciousness, however, is not enough because all the peasant’s prejudices and all his habits tell him that it is more profitable
to sell grain to a profiteer for several hundred rubles than
to give it to the state for a few dozen paper rubles that he
cannot get anything for at the moment. We say that since
the country is ruined, since there is no fuel and the factories
are at a standstill, you, the peasant, must help the workers’
state, you must give up your grain as a loan. The paper money
you are being given for your grain certifies that you have
made the state a loan. And if you, the peasant, make the
state a loan and give up your grain, the worker will be able
to rehabilitate industry. There is no other way of rehabilitating industry in a country that has been ruined by four
years of imperialist war and two years of civil war—there
is no other way! Any peasant who is a little bit developed
and has emerged from his primordial muzhik darkness will
agree that there is no other way. But the class-conscious
peasant that you can convince if you speak to him as man
to man is one thing and the prejudices of millions of peasants
are another; they understand that they have lived under
capitalism all their lives and consider they are justified in
regarding the grain as their property—they have not had any
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
525
experience of the new order and cannot put their trust in it.
That is why we say that precisely in this sphere, in the matter of food, there is the most bitter war between capitalism
and socialism, a war in actual fact and not merely in words
and not in the upper echelons of state organisation. Those
upper echelons are easily reorganised, and the significance
of such changes is not very great. But here the consciousness
of the working people and of their vanguard, the working
class, is fighting the last, decisive battle against the prejudices and disunity of the peasant masses. When the advocates of capitalism—no matter whether they call themselves
representatives of bourgeois parties, or Mensheviks, or Socialist-Revolutionaries—when they say, “Renounce the
implementation of the state grain monopoly, the compulsory
requisitioning of grain at fixed prices,” we answer them by
saying, “You, dear, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, you are perhaps sincere people, but you are defenders of
capitalism, you preach nothing but the prejudices of the old,
petty-bourgeois democracy that knows nothing but freedom
to trade, that stands aside from the fierce war against capitalism and considers that all this can be amicably settled.”
We have enough experience and we know that those who
really belong to the working masses, those who have not
risen to the upper echelons, those who have been exploited
by the landowners and capitalists all their lives—they know
that here it is a matter of the last, decisive battle against
capitalism, a battle that does not allow of any conciliation.
They know that there cannot be any concessions here, in
this particular sphere. When Soviet power said that temporarily—as it did last summer—for so many weeks people would
be allowed to carry with them one and a half poods of grain,
the food apparatus that was later set working procured more
than before. You know that at the present time we have had
to make a similar concession and allow such an interval—let
the worker during his holidays get his own supplies. By
this we are giving ourselves greater opportunities to renew
our work and guarantee our socialist activities. We are
fighting a real battle against capitalism and we assert that
no matter what concessions capitalism may force us to make
we are still in favour of the struggle against it and against
exploitation. We shall fight in this field as ruthlessly as we are
526
V. I. L E N I N
fighting Denikin and Kolchak, because they draw fresh
strength for themselves from the might of capitalism, and
this might, of course, does not fall from the sky, it is based
on freedom to trade in grain and other goods. We know that
one of the main sources of capitalism is freedom to trade in
grain in the country, and it is this source that has been the
ruin of all previous republics. Today the last, decisive battle
against capitalism and against freedom to trade is being
fought and for us this is a truly basic battle between capitalism and socialism. If we win in this fight there will be
no return to capitalism and the former system, no return
to what has been in the past. Such a return will be impossible
so long as there is a war against the bourgeoisie, against
profiteering and against petty proprietorship, and as long
as the principle “every man for himself and God for all”
is not retained. We have to forget the principle that every
peasant should be for himself and Kolchak for all. We now
have a new type of relations and of organisation. It must
be remembered that socialism is progressing and no matter
to what extent we impose remnants of the old on ourselves
they will be nothing but old fragments of old ideas because
the peasant must have a completely different attitude to the
article of consumption he produces; if, on the other hand, he
sells food to workers at uncontrolled prices he will most certainly become a bourgeois and a property-owner, but we say
that food must be sold at fixed state prices so that we shall
have an opportunity to get away from capitalism. And now
that we have to live through this difficult period of hunger
and compare the present situation with last year’s we have
to admit that the situation this year is incomparably better
than it was last year. It is true that we have to make certain
concessions, but we can always answer for them and explain
them. But still, although we have done a lot in twenty months
of Soviet power we have not yet found a way out of all the
difficulties of the present grave situation.
When we have got the peasant away from his property and
when we have made him turn towards the work of our state
we shall be able to say that we have covered a difficult
section of our road. But we shall not deviate from that road,
any more than we shall deviate from the road of struggle
against Denikin and Kolchak. We hear such things from those
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
527
people who call themselves Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks as “the war is hopeless”, “there is no way out of
the war and we must make every effort to end it”—you will
hear such things said everywhere. People say this who do
not understand the real state of affairs. They think the Civil
War is hopeless because it is too burdensome, but can they
not understand that the war is being forced on us by European imperialists because they are afraid of Soviet Russia?
Furthermore, they have in their palaces, today Savinkov,
tomorrow Maklakov and then Breshkovskaya—and they
have not got them there for gossip, they talk to them about
the most rational way of sending soldiers and guns and other
death-dealing weapons here, to us, how to send help to the
Archangel Front, how to link it up with the Southern and
Eastern fronts and even the Petrograd Front. All Europe,
and all-the European bourgeoisie have taken up arms against
Soviet Russia. They have become so insolent that they even
make such proposals to the Hungarian Government as, “You
reject Soviet power and we’ll give you bread.” I am thinking
that the proposal will serve as powerful propaganda in
Hungary when they read about it in the Budapest newspapers! Nevertheless it is better and more frank and honest
than all the chiromancy about the struggle for freedom
to trade, etc. Here the issue is clear you need bread, reject
whatever is not to our advantage and we will give you
the bread.
If, therefore, the kind capitalists were to turn to the Russian
peasants with the same proposal we would be very grateful to them. We should be able to say that we are short of
propagandists but now Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson have come to our aid and have shown themselves to be
the best propagandists. There would not be any more
speeches about the Constituent Assembly, about freedom of
assembly, etc., everything would be above-board. But we
shall ask the capitalist gentry—you have so many war debts,
your bags are packed tight with promissory notes for so many
thousand millions of war debts—do you think the people are
going to pay them? You have so many shells, cartridges, guns,
that you don’t now what to do with them—was firing at
Russian workers the best thing you could think of? You
bought Kolchak, why didn’t you save him? You recently
528
V. I. L E N I N
passed a resolution to the effect that the international League
of Nations of the Allied powers recognised Kolchak as the
only authoritative Russian ruler. 86 And after that nothing
was seen of Kolchak but a pair of clean heels. Why did that
happen? (Applause.) And so we see from the experience of
Kolchakia what the promises of the Socialist-Revolutionary
and Menshevik leaders are worth. Did not they begin the Kolchak campaign? They held power in Samara. What are their
promises worth? And what are we to do if they gather against
us forces that from the military point of view are, of course,
immeasurably superior to ours—we cannot make even an
approximate comparison? The bourgeoisie, great and small,
naturally draw the relevant conclusion from this and they
say to the weary, hungry masses, “You have been dragged into
a civil war from which there is no way out. How can your
backward, weary country fight against Britain, France and
America? ” We are constantly hearing this tune sung all
round us—we hear it daily and hourly from the bourgeois
intelligentsia. They are trying to prove that the Civil War
is a hopeless business. We can find the answer in history—
the history of the government in Siberia. We know that there
a are affluent peasants living there who have never known serfdom and who cannot, therefore, show gratitude to the Bolsheviks for liberating them from the landowners. We know
that a government was organised there and that for a start
some beautiful banners prepared by the Socialist-Revolutionary Chernov and the Menshevik Maisky were sent there;
these banners bore such slogans as “Constituent Assembly”,
“Freedom to Trade”—they were willing to inscribe on them
everything the ignorant peasant wanted so long as he would
help them overthrow the Bolsheviks! And what happened to
that government? Instead of a Constituent Assembly they
got Kolchak’s dictatorship, the worst possible, worse than
any tsarist dictatorship. Was that an accident? We are
told that it was a mistake. Gentlemen—individuals may
make mistakes in some act or another in their lives, but
here you had the aid of all the best people, the best there were
in your parties. Did you not have the help of the intelligentsia? Even if they were not there—and we know that
they were—you still had the intelligentsia of all the advanced countries—France, Britain, America and Japan. You
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
529
had land, you had a fleet, you had an army and you had
money—why, then, did everything collapse? Was it because
of a mistake that was made by some Chernov or Maisky?
No, it was because there cannot be any middle way in this
desperate war, and in order to hold out the bourgeoisie
has to shoot down by scores and hundreds the very best of
the working class. This is clear from the example of Finland,
and now Siberia is showing another example of it. In order
to prove the rootless nature of the Bolsheviks, the SocialistRevolutionaries and Mensheviks began organising a new
power and flopped with it triumphantly directly at the feet
of Kolchak’s government. That was no accident, for the same
thing is happening all over the world, and if all the Bolshevik speeches were to disappear, and with them all their printed publications that are being persecuted in every country
where Bolshevik pamphlets are being fished out as something
infectious and dangerous to poor Wilson, Clemenceau and
Lloyd George—if all that were to disappear we would point
to Siberia where their henchmen have only just been operating and we would say, “Here is what works better than any
agitation!” This shows that there can be no middle way between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship
of the working class. This is an argument that is penetrating
into the heads of the least class-conscious of the peasants to
say nothing of the working class. You know that the peasants
said that they did not want a Bolshevik government, they
wanted freedom to trade in grain. You know that in Samara
the peasantry, the middle peasants, were on the side of the
bourgeoisie. Who has now driven them away from Kolchak?
It seems that the peasant alone cannot create his own. . . . *
This is confirmed by the entire history of revolution, and
anybody who is familiar with it and with the history of the
socialist movement knows that the development of political
parties in the nineteenth century leads to this.
The peasant, of course, did not know this. He has never
studied the history of socialism or the history of revolution
but he recognises and believes in arguments derived from his
own experience. When he saw that Bolshevik-imposed hardships were for the sake of victory over the exploiters, and
* This
word could not be deciphered in the shorthand notes.—Ed.
530
V. I. L E N I N
that Kolchak’s government brought back capitalism with
its old policemen, he said, fully conscious of what he was
saying, “I choose the dictatorship of the working-class masses
and will go so far as to help in the full defeat of the dictatorship of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie (that is what he calls
Kolchak’s dictatorship) so that there will be the dictatorship
of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the people.” The
history of Kolchak shows that no matter how long the Civil
War may last, how difficult it may be and how hopeless it
may seem, it will not lead us into a blind alley. It will lead
the masses of the people, those that are farthest removed
from the Bolsheviks, to believe through their own experience
in the need to go over to the side of Soviet power.
And that, comrades, is the war situation. Now allow me
to finish up my report by some indications of the co-operative work that we have before us. Many comrades have
spoken who are more competent than I to appraise the
practical tasks with which you are faced. I will allow myself
to express the hope that the task you have to undertake—the
creation of a consumers’ co-operative society that embraces
the masses of the working people—that this tremendously
important task will be carried out successfully. In the conditions of capitalist society the co-operatives naturally produced a top group that formed their leadership, and this top
layer were all whiteguards. It turned out this way not only in
our country; it was proved by the co-operative leaders who
concluded an agreement with Kolchak. It was the same in
Britain and Germany, in capitalist countries. When the war
broke out, the upper strata of the co-operatives who were
accustomed to a luxurious way of life, went over to the
imperialists.
It is no accident that throughout the world the upper
echelons of the socialist parliamentarians, the upper echelons of the socialist movement went over entirely to the
imperialists during the imperialist war. They helped start the
war, and they have gone so far that their friends head the
government that murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg
and are helping shoot the leaders of the working class. This
is not the fault of individual people. It is not the crime of
any unfortunate criminal. It is the result of capitalism that
has corrupted them. That is how it was everywhere in the
THE FOOD AND WAR SITUATION
531
world, and Russia is no holy land; we could not get out of
capitalist society in any other way than by engaging in a
serious war with those upper echelons. It is still not over
today, when it embraces the masses of the people and the
masses have arisen in struggle against all forms of profiteering. Those who have personally experienced exploitation
will not forget it when they take the business of distribution into their own hands. It is possible that in this field
we shall suffer quite a few defeats. We know that in this
field there is a great deal of backwardness and ignorance
and that we shall fail, first in one place and then in another—
we know that we cannot achieve anything at a single blow.
But we who are conscientiously carrying on Soviet work, we,
class-conscious workers and peasants who are organising
socialist Russia, shall continue that war. You will pursue
this war together with us, and we shall end that war, difficult
as it may be, with full victory, comrades. (Applause.)
Brief report published in
Pravda No. 1 6 7 , July 3 1 , 1919
First published in full in 1 9 3 2
Published according to
the shorthand notes
532
SPEECH AT THE FIRST ALL - RUSSIA CONGRESS
OF WORKERS IN EDUCATION
AND SOCIALIST CULTURE
JULY 31, 1919 87
Comrades, it gives me great pleasure to greet your Congress
in the name of the Council of People’s Commissars.
In the sphere of education we have long had to struggle
against the same difficulties that Soviet power encounters
in all spheres of work and in all spheres of organisation. We
saw that organisations regarded as the only mass organisations were from the very outset headed by people who, for a
lengthy period, were under the influence of bourgeois prejudices. In the first days of Soviet power, in October 1917, we
even saw how the army swamped us in Petrograd with declarations to the effect that it did not recognise Soviet power,
threatened to go against Petrograd and expressed solidarity
with bourgeois governments. As long ago as that we were sure
that these declarations came from the top people in these
organisations, from the army committees of that time, who
represented the past in the development of the moods, convictions and views of our army. The situation has since then
repeated itself in all mass organisations—in respect of the
railway proletariat, and again in respect of the post and telegraph employees. We have always noted that at first the
past maintains its power and influence over mass organisations. We were, therefore, not at all surprised at the lengthy
and stubborn struggle that went on among the schoolteachers, the majority of whom, if not all, from the very
beginning took a stand hostile to Soviet power. We saw
how we gradually had to overcome bourgeois prejudices
FIRST CONGRESS OF WORKERS IN EDUCATION
533
and how the school-teachers, who were closely connected with
the workers and labouring peasantry, had to struggle against
the former bourgeois system to win for themselves rights
and to break a road to a genuine rapprochement with the
working masses, to a genuine understanding of the nature
of the socialist revolution that was under way. Until now
you have had more than anybody else to deal with the old
prejudices of the bourgeois intelligentsia, with their usual
methods and arguments, with their defence of bourgeois
or capitalist society, with their struggle, not usually direct
but carried on under cover of some outwardly pleasant slogans which are advanced to defend capitalism in one way or
another.
Comrades, you may remember how Marx describes the
way the worker got to the modern capitalist factory, how
he analysed the enslavement of the worker in a disciplined,
cultured and “free” capitalist society, studied the causes
of the oppression of labour by capital, how he approached
the fundamentals of the production process, how he described
the worker’s entry into a capitalist factory where the robbery
of surplus-value takes place and the foundation of capitalist
exploitation is laid down, where capitalist society is built,
the society that gives riches to the few and holds the many in
a state of oppression. When Marx reached this most significant, most fundamental place in his book—the analysis
of capitalist exploitation—he accompanied his introduction
to this analysis with the ironical remark that the place he
was taking the reader to, the place where profit was extracted
by the capitalists, was the place where liberty, equality
and Bentham ruled. 88 By this Marx stressed the ideology upheld by the bourgeoisie in capitalist society and which they
justify because from their point of view, from the point of
view of the bourgeoisie who had won the fight against the
feudals, “Liberty, Equality and Bentham” ruled in capitalist
society which was based on the rule of money, the rule of
capital and the exploitation of the working people. What
they call liberty is liberty to make profit, liberty for the
few to become rich, the liberty of the trade turnover; what
they call equality is equality between capitalist and worker;
and the rule of Bentham is the rule of the petty-bourgeois
prejudice about liberty and equality.
534
V. I. L E N I N
If we look around us, if we take a look at those arguments
that were used in the struggle against us yesterday and which
are being used today by members of the old teachers’ union
and which we still meet with among our ideological opponents who call themselves socialists (the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks), those arguments that we meet
with in a not very conscious form in our day-to-day talks
with the peasant masses who have not yet understood the
significance of socialism—if you take a look at and give
some thought to the ideological meaning of these arguments
you will find the very same bourgeois motif that Marx
stressed in Capital. All these people reiterate the catch-phrase
that Liberty, Equality and Bentham rule in capitalist society. And when objections to us are raised from this point of
view and it is said that we, the Bolsheviks and Soviet power,
are contravening freedom and equality, we refer those who
say so to the elements of political economy, to the basic
doctrines of Marx. We maintain that the freedom you accuse
the Bolsheviks of contravening is the freedom of capital, the
freedom of an owner to sell grain on the open market, i.e.,
the freedom for the few to make profit, for those who have
grain surpluses. That freedom of the press that the Bolsheviks have constantly been accused of having violated—what
is this freedom of the press in a capitalist society? Everybody
could see what the press was in our “free” Russia. This was
seen to a still greater extent by people who were familiar
with, have been able to observe closely or had had dealings
with press affairs in the advanced capitalist countries. Freedom of the press in capitalist society means freedom to trade
in publications and in their influence on the masses. Freedom
of the press means that the press, a powerful medium for
influencing the masses, is maintained at the expense of the
capitalists. Such is the freedom of the press that the Bolsheviks violated and they are proud of having produced the
first press free of the capitalists, that in a gigantic country
they have for the first time set up a press that does not depend
on a handful of rich men and millionaires—a press that is
devoted entirely to the struggle against capital, the struggle
to which we must subordinate everything. Only the factory
proletariat that is capable of leading the peasant masses
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that are not class-conscious can be the leader, the vanguard,
of the working people in this struggle.
When we are reproached with having established a
dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united
socialist front is proposed, we say, “Yes, it is a dictatorship
of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift
from that position because it is the party that has won, in
the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the entire
factory and industrial proletariat. This party had won that
position even before the revolution of 1905. It is the party
that was at the head of the workers in 1905 and which since
then—even at the time of the reaction after 1905 when the
working-class movement was rehabilitated with such difficulty under the Stolypin Duma—merged with the working
class and it alone could lead that class to a profound, fundamental change in the old society.” When a united socialist
front is proposed to us we say that it is the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties that propose it, and that
they have wavered in favour of the bourgeoisie throughout
the revolution. We have had a double experience—the Kerensky period when the Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a
coalition government that was helped by the Entente, that
is, by the world bourgeoisie, the imperialists of France,
America and Britain. What did that result in? Was there
that gradual transition to socialism they had promised?
No, there was collapse, the absolute rule of the imperialists,
the rule of the bourgeoisie and the complete bankruptcy of
all sorts of illusions about class conciliation.
If that experience is not enough, take Siberia. There we
saw the same thing happen again. In Siberia the government
was against the Bolsheviks. At the beginning the entire
bourgeoisie who had fled from Soviet power came to the help
of the Czechoslovak uprising and the uprising of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks. They were helped by the
entire bourgeoisie and the capitalists of the most powerful
countries of Europe and America; their aid was not merely
ideological but financial and military aid as well. And what
was the result? What came of this rule that was allegedly
the rule of the Constituent Assembly, that allegedly democratic government of Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks? It led to the Kolchak gamble. Why did it lead to the
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collapse that we have witnessed? Because here we saw the
effect of the basic truth, which the so-called socialists from
the camp of our opponents do not want to understand, that
there can be only one of two possible powers in capitalist
society, either the power of the capitalists or the power of
the proletariat, no matter whether that society is developing, is firmly on its feet, or is declining. Every middle-ofthe-road power is a dream, and every attempt to set up
something in between leads only to people, even if they are
absolutely sincere, shifting to one side or the other. Only
the power of the proletariat, only the rule of the workers
can ally to itself the majority of those who work, because the
peasant masses, although they constitute a mass of working
people, are nevertheless to a certain extent the owners of
their small properties, of their own grain. And that is the
struggle that has unfolded before our eyes, the struggle
which shows how the proletariat, in the course of lengthy
political trials, during the changes in governments that we
see in various places on the outskirts of Russia, is sweeping
away everything that serves exploitation, it shows how the
proletariat is breaking its own road and is becoming more
and more the genuine, absolute leader of the masses of
working people in suppressing and eliminating the resistance
of capital.
Those who say that the Bolsheviks violate freedom and
who propose the formation of a united socialist front, that is,
an alliance with those who vacillated, and twice in the
history of the Russian revolution went over to the side of the
bourgeoisie—these people are very fond of accusing us of
resorting to terror. They say that the Bolsheviks have
introduced a system of terror in administration, and if Russia
is to be saved, the Bolsheviks must renounce it. This reminds
me of a witty French bourgeois who, in his bourgeois manner,
said with reference to the abolition of the death penalty,
“Let the murderers be the first to abolish the death penalty.”
I recall this when people say, “Let the Bolsheviks renounce
the terror.” Let the Russian capitalists and their allies,
America, France and Britain, that is, those who first imposed
terror on Soviet Russia, let them renounce it! They are the
imperialists who attacked us and are still attacking us with
all their military might, which is a thousand times greater
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537
than ours. Is it not terror for all the Entente countries, all
the imperialists of Britain, France and America, to keep in
their capitals servitors of international capital—whether
their names are Sazonov or Maklakov—who have organised
tens and hundreds of thousands of the dissatisfied, ruined,
humiliated and indignant representatives of capital and the
bourgeoisie? You must have heard about the plots among the
military, you must have read about the latest plot in Krasnaya Gorka, which nearly led to the loss of Petrograd; what
was this but a manifestation of terror on the part of the bourgeoisie of the whole world, which will commit any violence,
crime and atrocity in order to reinstate the exploiters in
Russia and stamp out the names of the socialist revolution,
which is now threatening even their own countries? There
is the source of terror, that is where the responsibility lies!
That is why we are sure that those who preach renunciation
of terror in Russia are nothing but conscious, or unwitting,
tools and agents of the imperialist terrorists, who are trying
to crush Russia with their blockades and aid to Denikin and
Kolchak. But their cause is a hopeless one.
Russia is the country assigned by history the role of
trail-blazer of the socialist revolution, and that is just why
so much struggle and suffering has fallen to our lot. The
capitalists and imperialists of other countries realise that
Russia is up in arms, and that the future not only of Russian
but of international capital is being decided in Russia.
That is why in all their press—in all the bourgeois world
press which they have bribed with their many millions—
they spread the most incredible slanders about the Bolsheviks.
They are attacking Russia in the name of the selfsame
principles of “Liberty, Equality and Bentham”. If you come
across someone in this country who thinks that when he
speaks of f